A Clockwork Snare [1/??]
Jun. 25th, 2007 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runicloreA Clockwork Snare
Chapter one
Author: Amber Michelle
Fandom: a very AU VP Lenneth
Words: 4997
Other chapters: (pending)
Notes: this is the completed first chapter, draft one point five. The story is based on characters from the interactive fiction project "Illusion of Memory." If you want to know more, feel free to ask. If you spot errors or inconsistencies, I'll try to overcome my laziness long enough to fix them. :p Note this is an alternate universe of the original VP game, so there will be discrepencies with canon.
(What's new - the second half. I don't remember changing much in the first half, but I could be wrong! That was quite a while ago. Chapter two is half done, which is why I'm posting this now.)
......................................................
Fall was a mild season in the Artolian countryside, which some considered merely an offshoot of summer, nature's last hurrah before hibernating beneath the snowdrifts. The central plain was painted with the colors of harvest, and the vivid reds and yellows of trees shedding their leaves. The grasses would sway and dance in winds that brought just a breath of ice from the colder climes to the north and east, and it seemed to Raeger when she stared out her window that summer hadn't ended after all, and that it never would.
That, of course, was only wishful thinking on her part. The harvest brought change to the manor as well as it did to their land; once domestic interests were taken care of at the house, they would move to the city for the winter, and the manor would be run by a skeleton crew of servants. The housekeeper, the chamberlain, their handpicked helpers - all would stay behind, while the family took their personal servants to Artolia proper. Her father even purchased a slave, probably at mother's urging. They couldn't go without one, not when everyone else in the city benefited from the influx of Japanese prisoners to the mainland.
It was some kind of war, Melissa wrote in her last letter. They - the Japanese - were from an island called Hilan, or something to the effect that she couldn't pronounce, and they were at war with a sea-faring nation. Well-bred girls didn't know about wars, maybe, but rumors flooded the docks, and if there was one thing the servants were good for, in Melissa's estimation, it was gossip.
Of the circle of friends Raeger formed at her countryside home, Melissa was the one she'd bid good-bye to almost happily. But Melissa knew what was going on in Gerabellum, and that was a connection worth keeping. It was a place outside of Artolia, one Raeger would never see, but she could hear about it from others and imagine the rest.
She'd once read that a good imagination was worth a thousand miles on the road. Though she didn't believe that for a minute, her own mind was all she had - and perhaps a few books, here and there. It seemed as though the library was shrinking. The number of books she had read was greater than the number left that she hadn't. The one good thing about their yearly migration to the city was her access to the palace and university libraries, which she plundered every year for novels, travel logs, and history papers to make her time worthwhile.
Raeger was standing at her habitual place by the northern window of her bedchamber to watch the road on the first day of November, though the date was nothing of importance to her. Marie would arrive on the morrow to finalize Raeger's part in the wedding, and then be off again for the city, where the rest of her family was overseeing the event. The Lords Millais would then arrive to accompany them to Artolia, and she would have to say good bye to her last good friend.
Marie would be moving north with her new husband to Villnore. It made Raeger's throat clench to think about it, no matter how safe it was supposed to be up there. She chewed at her lip as she watched for signs that her friend would arrive early.
More likely she'd arrive late, and Raeger would stand there with her stomach churning and twisting into knots every extra minute she had to wait. That was Marie, after all. That was the way it always happened.
The sound of her door opening and closing finally persuaded Raeger to let the curtain slide closed and turn away from the window. Bertha and Maiya, the new Japanese girl, rested armfulls of quilted dresses on the foot of the bed.
"This is the last of them," Bertha said without preamble as she straightened, pushing her hair back into place. "Most of these should still fit you, but the others have to be put in storage for Elise. You're filling out too much for them."
Raeger's cheeks warmed. "I'm not that bad."
"No, you're thin as a rail except for that," her nursemaid said sourly with a gesture toward her chest. "If you don't eat more, you'll start to look unbalanced." Maiya giggled and choked it back immediately, fussing with the first gown on the heap when Bertha twisted around to glare at her. "Your mother sent an order to the seamstress, and you're to be re-measured when we get to the capitol."
"Right." Raeger sighed and turned away, reaching back to unbutton her dress.
Bertha brushed her hands away, and Raeger stood obediently while her nursemaid took care of the task and the new girl prepared the first of her winter clothes. Most of them fit, more or less, though some were too tight across the chest and one wouldn't quite button all the way. The dresses were too warm for the fall; one of them was double-lined and meant for riding or travel, and she sweltered while her nursemaid did whatever it was she had to do for marking where to let seams out and how to alter the dress to fit Raeger for another winter.
She divested herself of the dress as soon as she thought Bertha was finished, and pulled her summer smock on quickly, managing half the buttons herself before the other woman came to her rescue.
"What about the reception gown?" she asked when she turned around, glancing at the heap of dresses on her trunk. "Will it be finished in time?"
"No need to worry about that," Bertha said. "We'll have it done first, of course. You'll be able to wear your summer clothes for a while yet." She nodded to the gowns Maiya was folding. "Most of those will fit without much modification if you make use of that corset."
Raeger grimaced. "Can't you just let a few seams out?"
Her nursemaid snorted. "You'll have to get used to it anyway, my lady." Maiya handed an armfull of dresses to her, ready to be taken back to storage, and Bertha said over her shoulder, "My lord Millais will not want to be ashamed of the wife he has to return to from campaigns, I'll wager."
Raeger sighed and went back to the window, peering through a crack in the curtains instead of pulling them aside. They didn't know what 'Lord Millais' would want at all, since they hadn't met him yet. He was a soldier, not a courtier; she knew that much about him, at least. He had a reputation for being a kind and fair-handed commander, and his family was only barely nobility, counted among the peers because of their fortune instead of birthright. Their reputation of valor was noble enough: his father had retaken the mountain territory, the area around Camille, and a great swath of the border with Crell Monferaigne. Lawfer himself had kept that border safe for over a year now, equally unyielding against enemy soldiers and demons from the mountainside.
Would a family deep in the art of war care if she painted her face and tortured her hair into ringlets? Bertha's assessment might be wrong. Yet it was also possible they would be strict about appearances to put their best foot forward among their new peers.
Melissa hadn't bothered with cosmetics until her marriage, and Marie still didn't. Nobody ran in the fields at the height of summer and worried about make-up, or slimming their waist to size. Raeger had never learned the skills, and had a sinking feeling her mother would sit her down to remedy that as soon as they reached the capitol and there was nowhere left to run.
"Maiya," she called softly. "Come here."
It was growing dark outside. The sun had set behind the trees to leave behind a violet sky streaked with orange and crimson clouds, lined with gold. The road remained empty, as far as Raeger could see, which wasn't very far in the gathering dusk. Someone lit the lamps at the gate, but her own room was still shadowed, and she considered leaving orders to keep it that way. Her mother would hear of it and be annoyed, she was positive.
"My lady?" The girl's accent was thick and still strange to the ear. It sounded as if she tried to roll the L sound into something else, and she spoke even the simplest sentences slowly, though it never appeared that she was confused when asked to do something. She'd learned quickly - learning a language required practice, which she had plenty of when being ordered around by the housekeeper. Raeger once attempted Egyptian hierglyphs, much to her tutor's amusement, but never read enough or tried hard enough to truly grasp the meaning of the old texts. That was a task better left to scholars, whose livelihood revolved around deciphering dead languages. Would Lord Millais care if his wife knew hieroglyphs? Bertha had asked skeptically. Raeger had to admit the answer was probably 'no.'
She twitched the curtain aside, but it was well and truly dark, and the road beyond the gate curved into the trees not far out. "Let me know if there are any visitors. Or send someone to else if you cannot. Just tell them I gave you an order if anyone causes trouble."
Maiya clasped her hands and bowed deeply, her long rope of a black braid sliding over her shoulder. "As you wish, my lady."
Raeger waited for the maid to leave, then wiggled her feet into a pair of slippers and ventured out of her bedroom for the first time since dinner. A folio of music was waiting on the writing desk. Her invitation to Marie's farewell party, folded into a thick cream envelope, glittered at the edges where it was decorated with gold leaf, and a tiny gold bell was knotted onto the end of the ribbon that tinkled when she nudged it with her finger. Marie delivered it herself on her way to the capitol, and Raeger was in a way glad she hadn't received it unawares. The party was for a happy occasion, and she was indeed happy for her friend - her husband seemed especially nice considering he was from up north, and wintering in a big city like Villnore would surely be more interesting than staying isolated with her father in their manor.
That place never seemed to be warm during the winter. There were so few people there that she supposed they didn't light all the fires. She remembered spending nights sneaking down to the kitchen for snacks and a little warmth. Marie wrote notes often while huddling under the covers, and her lines were always unevenly spaced, as if she couldn't see well enough to write a proper letter.
She left the envelope and picked up the folio instead. The air in her room was warm, and spilled into her second and kept it tolerable, but the hallway outside was chilly, enough that she could have sworn she saw her own breath mist in the meager light. Lamps were lit only on the bottom floor, where the rooms were still lively past dark; here there were candles, two to a mirror, and spaced far enough apart that she wouldn't have been able to read her music, had she stopped to look at it. Cold welled through through the carpet like a faint breeze, and her long strides let the draft in under her skirt so her legs were chilled. When she reached the small sitting room her father had converted into a little library, she immediately went to the fireplace and kindled the flames herself instead of waiting for a maid to do it.
If only you were as adept at sewing, her mother would sigh, if she were there. Sometimes Raeger felt the same way. Being good with a needle wouldn't warm her toes, however. She lingered while the flames took hold, hefting a good-sized slab of wood onto the smaller ones, and only left the hearth when she could move her fingers with ease.
The harpsicord, her reason for braving the cold hallway and the possibility of running into somebody, took up the entire back corner of the room. It had a single bed of keys polished black, and a ridge for her music, which she pulled out of the folio and arranged with care, so it wouldn't slip off while she played. They had a better one in the city, reserved for parties and private recitals, and she remembered dimly that her father argued for days with his wife about buying another for the manor, reluctant enough that she gathered, even at that early age, how valuable they must be. She didn't know what price was paid for the one she sat before now, but it was the instrument she first learned to play on, and she knew the loose, hollow keys, and the peeling varnish like the back of her hand. It didn't matter how hard she banged the keys, whether she slammed the lid down or kicked the legs as she used to do when idle.
Now she sat and stared at the music, her hands still in her lap. The bench was cold, even with her skirt tucked around her legs and the fire finally warming the room up. She'd picked a nocturne, and a slow one that she wasn't particularly fond of. It didn't even have a name. Number twenty-eight was written where the title should be, and she thought her father had acquired it from the university in Artolia proper.
A waste then, she thought, flipping through the folder for something better. She settled on an Ingild fantasia and put it up instead, playing at the fingerings in the air above the keys before starting in earnest. The hour was late for practice, but she didn't hear Elise anywhere nearby, and she wouldn't go to sleep for hours yet, if her recent habits were anything to gauge by.
The piece she'd chosen was meant to accompany other instruments, so Raeger imagined what she could as she played. Full orchestral performances were rare in Artolia, and she'd only seen one once as a child, during a trip to Flenceburg with her real mother. She'd had family there, and supposed that was still true, but her father refused to fund a trip there. Too close to the border with Crell Monferaigne, he said. Too expensive. Lucy wouldn't want to go - 'Lucy,' the one Raeger had called Mother since five. She preferred it when Father didn't name her at all.
Raeger played until she hit a snag, then went back to play the part she missed again, and then again. Ingild had loved writing long, difficult passages, and she wasn't so good at keeping up with them sometimes. It was easy to loathe the creation of the thirty-second note and everything that lay beyond, which she most certainly did, but she went over it until she began to get it right, until the wood feeding the fire crumbled to ashes and the flames flared for a moment before shrinking. She was up to throw another chunk of wood in before she thought, and only paused when there was a sharp, staccato knock at the door.
'Come in,' was on the tip of her tongue, but the door opened before Raeger could utter a word, and Elise came bounding in quickly, and leaned back against the door to shut it. Her shiver spoke volumes, but not as sharply as the draft that came in after her.
"I thought I heard you in here." Shaking her ringlets out and tucking a silk ribbon into her sleeve, Elise hurried over to the harpsicord bench and dropped onto the bench without a scrap of grace, shivering again. "Ingild? Ugh." She gathered the music in a messy stack and dropped them onto the table, rifling through the folio. "Let me see..."
Raeger tossed the wood onto the fire and let the sparks fly, moving forward. "Hey--"
"What?" The momentary sweetness of relief on the girl's face melted into a frown. "You've been here all day, haven't you? I need to practice too."
She pressed her lips together silently, hoping to faze Elise at least a little with a cold stare, but the little brat went back to her search and pulled out a shorter piece Raeger knew very well, and didn't much like. "I didn't see you trying to get in earlier," she muttered when it was clear the other wasn't paying attention.
"Fittings," came the sing-song reply. "Stop frowning like that, it's ugly. At least you get new clothes. All I get is your leftovers."
Raeger sighed sharply, the sound lost in music as her sister started to play. Elise would win if they took the argument to Mother, and Raeger wasn't angry enough to put up with the inevitable shouting match if she did that. The brat really did need practice, she'd get no argument there - she was months behind on music after spending the entire summer playing, still stumbling on chords and notations that had become second nature to the eldest and, for that matter, anyone with a passing competance in playing.
She stood a moment longer, until Elise made her first error, before resigning herself to a night cooped up in her room, and grabbed a book from the table before she left. In the dim illumination of the hall she could just make out the glint of a title she knew well: Tales From the Ancients.
The night passed with tales of children born from lotus blossoms and the long battle against the god of storms. Her dreams were filled with endless sands, shifting in time to Elise's music. Daylight, as always, came too quickly.
***
Morning brought a flurry of activity downstairs. Raefer avoided it, taking her breakfast in her room again and remaining under the pretense of finding something suitable to wear for the arrival of her guests. Bertha had laid a dress out before sunrise - one of the newer, nicer ones - but she didn't like the color very much. Too sanguine, too dark for her coloring, despite what her mother said it did for the apples of her cheeks. Laying it on a bit thick, wasn't she, with a shade like that? She couldn't think of a name for it that wasn't cliche.
"Isn't there anything else?" she asked plaintively, fingers hooked over the handles of her wardrobe. "The blue wool with the lace trimming?"
Maiya shook her head, eyes downcast. "Your dresses are still being worked."
Raeger stared at her a moment, then sighed sharply. She should have guessed the adjustments wouldn't be done overnight, but she thought this was nice timing on the part of Mother. Even she wouldn't meet Lawfer in a garden smock, no matter how little she cared for the idea of impressing them. These were the people she had to face for the rest of her life. Their impression had better be favorable.
"Alright then," she said reluctantly, arms sagging. She turned her back on the drab curtain of her dresses. "I'll finish my chocolate first, then." It would serve them right if she walked in with an ugly stain on her skirt - though it wouldn't show on the dark red, and the earfull she'd get-- she would be careful, even in her nightclothes.
"I am sorry." Maiya's hesitance made her look back. "This is what I am told."
Raeger shook her head as she sat down, trying to control her tone. "It isn't your fault. I'm not angry at you." The maid bowed and remained by the bedroom door, still avoiding her gaze in what she'd come to expect; it was some custom or other. The slave's posture deferred even when she had permission to lift her head - her shoulders curved down, her hands were clasped in a way that reminded Raeger of the day she'd arrived, with her wrists clamped together with iron manacles. She didn't know if this was a product of her training for housework, or if other Yamato people displayed the same habits. She'd never met another. "You may raise your head."
The maid obeyed, but did not look at her.
Mother says they thrive on abasement, she thought to herself. But Maiya does not look like she wants to grovel. She must be smart to have learned the language of the continent so fast. And she was smart to turn the other cheek when the household's offhand comments offended her dignity. Raeger wasn't sure she could muster the same bearing in that situation. Her own sister knew too well how to make the blood drain from her face, or how to make her angry. She kicked herself for it every time, yet gave in again and again.
"You don't want it," Maiya said slowly. "Why? It's so pretty."
She shrugged and sipped at her chocolate. It had cooled considerably in the short time she'd spent in the closet. "It's uncomfortable, and it probably won't be warm enough."
The maid glanced into the bedroom. The red hem peeked out at them, a vivid splash of color against the cream duvet. "You would prefer silk?"
"Silk?" Raeger spluttered, swallowing too quickly. "Are you mad? That would be freezing!" And it would cost a fortune, no less - she was lucky to have any at all in her collection.
Maiya tilted her head. "All of my winter robes were silk. I was never cold inside."
Raeger stared down at the dregs of her chocolate. "All of your clothes were silk?" She couldn't keep the incredulity out of her tone. Artolia's own princess, notorious for her spending on luxuries, wore wool or cotton more often than not. She hadn't meet Jelanda yet, and dreaded the opportunity, imagining another Elise, only twice as spoiled and with the ultimate authority of rank.
Rank meant so terribly much in the capitol. She supposed she was lucky to be somewhere just above middle, instead of at the bottom like this Yamato girl.
"You..." She examined her maid's face, the carefully kept hair, the absence of ear-piercings, which were the all-important sign of money and maturity for herself and Elise. "Were you rich? Ranked?"
There was a pause. "No..." She could see the wheels turn as Maiya composed her response. "We grow our silk. It is the girl's duty to spin and sew. When I was small..." She spread her hands, and for the first time Raeger noticed the rough spots on her fingertips, darker than the paleness of her palms. "When you get older, you weave. The loom is very heavy." Her hands clasped together again, this time at her waist in echo of Bertha. The pose didn't look quite right on her. "I served a warrior's lady when we were taken away. She also did this. All girls do. Rank does not matter."
"Was she - this lady - taken too?" Raeger asked.
Once again Maiya was slow to reply. "I... do not know where she is."
She stirred her chocolate, watching the cream swirl and darken, sprinkled with little flecks of froth. If Maiya were free, she might have envied her the dark, silky curtain of hair or her creamy skin. Her freedom from family strictures, maybe, if that wasn't the only kind of freedom the maid could claim. Raeger wouldn't mind freeing herself from her mother's commands, but to not know where she was - to wonder if she was alive, or if Elise was alive?
Father often said that Villnore would bend their necks and clamp them all in irons if they crossded the border; nobody ever forgot that their northern neighbor traded in all sorts of slaves, be they Yamato, or Artolian, or even their own people. Raeger hadn't taken it seriously before. There was a thick forest between central Artolia and the border, and winter was harsh beyond, on the mountain slopes, where Camille and Yudora were sprawled. The farmers would keep them supplied with slaves for a time, he said, but it was the necks of Artolia's peers they wanted to bend and break.
She thought Villnore would rather just kill them, but ever since Maiya was purchased, Raeger felt a distant chill when he mentioned it at the supper table. The tables could be turned. He spoke of deflecting the enemy with Camille as if it were a matter of course. Perhaps Hai-lan's leaders did the same thing, and thus Maiya was here serving her breakfast and lacing up her dresses.
"I'm sorry for asking," she said to break the silence, rising from the table. Her stomach was sinking, and she wished Bertha would bring another cup of chocolate, or even a plain mug of hot milk.
He wouldn't mention that to Lawfer or his father, would he, what he thought about Camille? They were en route from that region. Lawfer was posted there for the rest of the year.
Maiya followed her to the bedroom, where the new red dress was laid out across the foot of her bed, and the chair beside the nightstand heaped with linens and petticoats. Maybe she wouldn't be very cold at all, or her legs wouldn't be. The layers hung heavily from her waist, and her maid laced the corset slowly, tugging on the strings each time she looped them through another hook. Raeger gritted her teeth, but Maiya was kinder than her nursemaid, in that regard - she didn't pull as sharply as the other, instead making sure she could wedge her fingers between the boning and skin to determine how much room there was to breathe. She insisted they had nothing like these in Hai-lan, so Raeger was surprised at her sympathy.
"There was a visitor last night," the maid said when she had tied the strings and slipped the busk over. "A man, with a horse."
Raeger worked her shoulders, picking ineffectually at a wrinkle in the corset lining. It wouldn't show, but it was a little uncomfortable. "Not one of Marie's retainers, I suppose?"
"A stranger," the girl confirmed. "Not begging, he had money. I had to show him the temple."
"You had to... what?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "At night? They made you take him all the way over there?"
"He asked." Maiya brought the dress and held it up for Raeger to slip her arms into. "He knew Yamato words, so I did not mind."
"You shouldn't let them force you into things like that," Raeger replied, doing as bidden and letting the dress slip over her head. The maid did not respond, seemingly engrossed in the task of lacing the back up tightly.
Well, that was unusual. Even the slavers didn't know Japanese, from what Maiya had reluctantly revealed. Not many of them; it was the traders on the coast of Gerabellum, she guessed, who handled negotiations with whomever shipped the poor people over the sea. Melissa said as much. Who else needed to know? her friend asked in her last letter. They're here to work, not to speak.
"Is he still here?" she asked.
"I do not think so. I will ask."
Raeger sighed. Would Bertha let her go, even if he was there? Probably not. Lawfer wouldn't arrive for a while yet, some time in the afternoon at least, but it wasn't ruly for someone her age to associate herself with mysterious travelers who refused the basic tenets of hospitality. "Don't bother," she said when Maiya seemed about to leave. "Just... ask for a cup of warm milk?"
The maid bowed and left. Raeger tried to take a deep breath, and was relieved that she could almost do it without straining. She sat carefully on the edge of a chair by the window, afraid to wrinkle her skirt, and reached for her copy of legends.
Only a few were left from the night before, but she knew all of them well. None of the stories were from Yamato. There was one from Dipan about the great sages, and three from Crell Monferaigne about the battle maiden, whose blessing they invoked before battle. One featured the Lord of the Undead, but there was an entire volume just for stories about vampires and Hel's minions; it was Marie's favorite, but Raeger had grown slightly annoyed with the author over the years, because he couldn't make up his mind on the point of origin for his stories. Were all undead from Hel? Was their Lord her servant too?
Oh no, he said on page thirty. No, that great and terrible lord belonged to no one, not even Odin! Their battles were so great as to destroy all witnesses of them!
On page seventy, the great and terrible lord bent knee to Helheim. On page eighty-five, she knelt to him.
Legends were inconsistent by nature, she told herself, but the lack of unity made her avoid picking the book up again without someone else's encouragement. What made a vampire so terrifying, anyway? He couldn't even set foot out in the sunlight. A good douse of water would end him. There wasn't much charm in that.
References to the undead king in the book she held now, however, were more interesting. Maybe because war was made on him, and not the other way around. She couldn't tell what his character was like from the sparse descriptions - as if it could possibly be accurate, without the editor visiting his midnight palace. That was unlikely.
She heard Maiya return, and went into the other room for her milk. The maid slipped a note onto the table beside her before hurrying off with an apology, and its contents left Raeger slumping back in her chair.
'Marie will meet us in the capitol. Her father diverted their course directly to Artolia.'
Of course he did. Their visit would have been too good to be true.
***
Chapter one
Author: Amber Michelle
Fandom: a very AU VP Lenneth
Words: 4997
Other chapters: (pending)
Notes: this is the completed first chapter, draft one point five. The story is based on characters from the interactive fiction project "Illusion of Memory." If you want to know more, feel free to ask. If you spot errors or inconsistencies, I'll try to overcome my laziness long enough to fix them. :p Note this is an alternate universe of the original VP game, so there will be discrepencies with canon.
(What's new - the second half. I don't remember changing much in the first half, but I could be wrong! That was quite a while ago. Chapter two is half done, which is why I'm posting this now.)
......................................................
Fall was a mild season in the Artolian countryside, which some considered merely an offshoot of summer, nature's last hurrah before hibernating beneath the snowdrifts. The central plain was painted with the colors of harvest, and the vivid reds and yellows of trees shedding their leaves. The grasses would sway and dance in winds that brought just a breath of ice from the colder climes to the north and east, and it seemed to Raeger when she stared out her window that summer hadn't ended after all, and that it never would.
That, of course, was only wishful thinking on her part. The harvest brought change to the manor as well as it did to their land; once domestic interests were taken care of at the house, they would move to the city for the winter, and the manor would be run by a skeleton crew of servants. The housekeeper, the chamberlain, their handpicked helpers - all would stay behind, while the family took their personal servants to Artolia proper. Her father even purchased a slave, probably at mother's urging. They couldn't go without one, not when everyone else in the city benefited from the influx of Japanese prisoners to the mainland.
It was some kind of war, Melissa wrote in her last letter. They - the Japanese - were from an island called Hilan, or something to the effect that she couldn't pronounce, and they were at war with a sea-faring nation. Well-bred girls didn't know about wars, maybe, but rumors flooded the docks, and if there was one thing the servants were good for, in Melissa's estimation, it was gossip.
Of the circle of friends Raeger formed at her countryside home, Melissa was the one she'd bid good-bye to almost happily. But Melissa knew what was going on in Gerabellum, and that was a connection worth keeping. It was a place outside of Artolia, one Raeger would never see, but she could hear about it from others and imagine the rest.
She'd once read that a good imagination was worth a thousand miles on the road. Though she didn't believe that for a minute, her own mind was all she had - and perhaps a few books, here and there. It seemed as though the library was shrinking. The number of books she had read was greater than the number left that she hadn't. The one good thing about their yearly migration to the city was her access to the palace and university libraries, which she plundered every year for novels, travel logs, and history papers to make her time worthwhile.
Raeger was standing at her habitual place by the northern window of her bedchamber to watch the road on the first day of November, though the date was nothing of importance to her. Marie would arrive on the morrow to finalize Raeger's part in the wedding, and then be off again for the city, where the rest of her family was overseeing the event. The Lords Millais would then arrive to accompany them to Artolia, and she would have to say good bye to her last good friend.
Marie would be moving north with her new husband to Villnore. It made Raeger's throat clench to think about it, no matter how safe it was supposed to be up there. She chewed at her lip as she watched for signs that her friend would arrive early.
More likely she'd arrive late, and Raeger would stand there with her stomach churning and twisting into knots every extra minute she had to wait. That was Marie, after all. That was the way it always happened.
The sound of her door opening and closing finally persuaded Raeger to let the curtain slide closed and turn away from the window. Bertha and Maiya, the new Japanese girl, rested armfulls of quilted dresses on the foot of the bed.
"This is the last of them," Bertha said without preamble as she straightened, pushing her hair back into place. "Most of these should still fit you, but the others have to be put in storage for Elise. You're filling out too much for them."
Raeger's cheeks warmed. "I'm not that bad."
"No, you're thin as a rail except for that," her nursemaid said sourly with a gesture toward her chest. "If you don't eat more, you'll start to look unbalanced." Maiya giggled and choked it back immediately, fussing with the first gown on the heap when Bertha twisted around to glare at her. "Your mother sent an order to the seamstress, and you're to be re-measured when we get to the capitol."
"Right." Raeger sighed and turned away, reaching back to unbutton her dress.
Bertha brushed her hands away, and Raeger stood obediently while her nursemaid took care of the task and the new girl prepared the first of her winter clothes. Most of them fit, more or less, though some were too tight across the chest and one wouldn't quite button all the way. The dresses were too warm for the fall; one of them was double-lined and meant for riding or travel, and she sweltered while her nursemaid did whatever it was she had to do for marking where to let seams out and how to alter the dress to fit Raeger for another winter.
She divested herself of the dress as soon as she thought Bertha was finished, and pulled her summer smock on quickly, managing half the buttons herself before the other woman came to her rescue.
"What about the reception gown?" she asked when she turned around, glancing at the heap of dresses on her trunk. "Will it be finished in time?"
"No need to worry about that," Bertha said. "We'll have it done first, of course. You'll be able to wear your summer clothes for a while yet." She nodded to the gowns Maiya was folding. "Most of those will fit without much modification if you make use of that corset."
Raeger grimaced. "Can't you just let a few seams out?"
Her nursemaid snorted. "You'll have to get used to it anyway, my lady." Maiya handed an armfull of dresses to her, ready to be taken back to storage, and Bertha said over her shoulder, "My lord Millais will not want to be ashamed of the wife he has to return to from campaigns, I'll wager."
Raeger sighed and went back to the window, peering through a crack in the curtains instead of pulling them aside. They didn't know what 'Lord Millais' would want at all, since they hadn't met him yet. He was a soldier, not a courtier; she knew that much about him, at least. He had a reputation for being a kind and fair-handed commander, and his family was only barely nobility, counted among the peers because of their fortune instead of birthright. Their reputation of valor was noble enough: his father had retaken the mountain territory, the area around Camille, and a great swath of the border with Crell Monferaigne. Lawfer himself had kept that border safe for over a year now, equally unyielding against enemy soldiers and demons from the mountainside.
Would a family deep in the art of war care if she painted her face and tortured her hair into ringlets? Bertha's assessment might be wrong. Yet it was also possible they would be strict about appearances to put their best foot forward among their new peers.
Melissa hadn't bothered with cosmetics until her marriage, and Marie still didn't. Nobody ran in the fields at the height of summer and worried about make-up, or slimming their waist to size. Raeger had never learned the skills, and had a sinking feeling her mother would sit her down to remedy that as soon as they reached the capitol and there was nowhere left to run.
"Maiya," she called softly. "Come here."
It was growing dark outside. The sun had set behind the trees to leave behind a violet sky streaked with orange and crimson clouds, lined with gold. The road remained empty, as far as Raeger could see, which wasn't very far in the gathering dusk. Someone lit the lamps at the gate, but her own room was still shadowed, and she considered leaving orders to keep it that way. Her mother would hear of it and be annoyed, she was positive.
"My lady?" The girl's accent was thick and still strange to the ear. It sounded as if she tried to roll the L sound into something else, and she spoke even the simplest sentences slowly, though it never appeared that she was confused when asked to do something. She'd learned quickly - learning a language required practice, which she had plenty of when being ordered around by the housekeeper. Raeger once attempted Egyptian hierglyphs, much to her tutor's amusement, but never read enough or tried hard enough to truly grasp the meaning of the old texts. That was a task better left to scholars, whose livelihood revolved around deciphering dead languages. Would Lord Millais care if his wife knew hieroglyphs? Bertha had asked skeptically. Raeger had to admit the answer was probably 'no.'
She twitched the curtain aside, but it was well and truly dark, and the road beyond the gate curved into the trees not far out. "Let me know if there are any visitors. Or send someone to else if you cannot. Just tell them I gave you an order if anyone causes trouble."
Maiya clasped her hands and bowed deeply, her long rope of a black braid sliding over her shoulder. "As you wish, my lady."
Raeger waited for the maid to leave, then wiggled her feet into a pair of slippers and ventured out of her bedroom for the first time since dinner. A folio of music was waiting on the writing desk. Her invitation to Marie's farewell party, folded into a thick cream envelope, glittered at the edges where it was decorated with gold leaf, and a tiny gold bell was knotted onto the end of the ribbon that tinkled when she nudged it with her finger. Marie delivered it herself on her way to the capitol, and Raeger was in a way glad she hadn't received it unawares. The party was for a happy occasion, and she was indeed happy for her friend - her husband seemed especially nice considering he was from up north, and wintering in a big city like Villnore would surely be more interesting than staying isolated with her father in their manor.
That place never seemed to be warm during the winter. There were so few people there that she supposed they didn't light all the fires. She remembered spending nights sneaking down to the kitchen for snacks and a little warmth. Marie wrote notes often while huddling under the covers, and her lines were always unevenly spaced, as if she couldn't see well enough to write a proper letter.
She left the envelope and picked up the folio instead. The air in her room was warm, and spilled into her second and kept it tolerable, but the hallway outside was chilly, enough that she could have sworn she saw her own breath mist in the meager light. Lamps were lit only on the bottom floor, where the rooms were still lively past dark; here there were candles, two to a mirror, and spaced far enough apart that she wouldn't have been able to read her music, had she stopped to look at it. Cold welled through through the carpet like a faint breeze, and her long strides let the draft in under her skirt so her legs were chilled. When she reached the small sitting room her father had converted into a little library, she immediately went to the fireplace and kindled the flames herself instead of waiting for a maid to do it.
If only you were as adept at sewing, her mother would sigh, if she were there. Sometimes Raeger felt the same way. Being good with a needle wouldn't warm her toes, however. She lingered while the flames took hold, hefting a good-sized slab of wood onto the smaller ones, and only left the hearth when she could move her fingers with ease.
The harpsicord, her reason for braving the cold hallway and the possibility of running into somebody, took up the entire back corner of the room. It had a single bed of keys polished black, and a ridge for her music, which she pulled out of the folio and arranged with care, so it wouldn't slip off while she played. They had a better one in the city, reserved for parties and private recitals, and she remembered dimly that her father argued for days with his wife about buying another for the manor, reluctant enough that she gathered, even at that early age, how valuable they must be. She didn't know what price was paid for the one she sat before now, but it was the instrument she first learned to play on, and she knew the loose, hollow keys, and the peeling varnish like the back of her hand. It didn't matter how hard she banged the keys, whether she slammed the lid down or kicked the legs as she used to do when idle.
Now she sat and stared at the music, her hands still in her lap. The bench was cold, even with her skirt tucked around her legs and the fire finally warming the room up. She'd picked a nocturne, and a slow one that she wasn't particularly fond of. It didn't even have a name. Number twenty-eight was written where the title should be, and she thought her father had acquired it from the university in Artolia proper.
A waste then, she thought, flipping through the folder for something better. She settled on an Ingild fantasia and put it up instead, playing at the fingerings in the air above the keys before starting in earnest. The hour was late for practice, but she didn't hear Elise anywhere nearby, and she wouldn't go to sleep for hours yet, if her recent habits were anything to gauge by.
The piece she'd chosen was meant to accompany other instruments, so Raeger imagined what she could as she played. Full orchestral performances were rare in Artolia, and she'd only seen one once as a child, during a trip to Flenceburg with her real mother. She'd had family there, and supposed that was still true, but her father refused to fund a trip there. Too close to the border with Crell Monferaigne, he said. Too expensive. Lucy wouldn't want to go - 'Lucy,' the one Raeger had called Mother since five. She preferred it when Father didn't name her at all.
Raeger played until she hit a snag, then went back to play the part she missed again, and then again. Ingild had loved writing long, difficult passages, and she wasn't so good at keeping up with them sometimes. It was easy to loathe the creation of the thirty-second note and everything that lay beyond, which she most certainly did, but she went over it until she began to get it right, until the wood feeding the fire crumbled to ashes and the flames flared for a moment before shrinking. She was up to throw another chunk of wood in before she thought, and only paused when there was a sharp, staccato knock at the door.
'Come in,' was on the tip of her tongue, but the door opened before Raeger could utter a word, and Elise came bounding in quickly, and leaned back against the door to shut it. Her shiver spoke volumes, but not as sharply as the draft that came in after her.
"I thought I heard you in here." Shaking her ringlets out and tucking a silk ribbon into her sleeve, Elise hurried over to the harpsicord bench and dropped onto the bench without a scrap of grace, shivering again. "Ingild? Ugh." She gathered the music in a messy stack and dropped them onto the table, rifling through the folio. "Let me see..."
Raeger tossed the wood onto the fire and let the sparks fly, moving forward. "Hey--"
"What?" The momentary sweetness of relief on the girl's face melted into a frown. "You've been here all day, haven't you? I need to practice too."
She pressed her lips together silently, hoping to faze Elise at least a little with a cold stare, but the little brat went back to her search and pulled out a shorter piece Raeger knew very well, and didn't much like. "I didn't see you trying to get in earlier," she muttered when it was clear the other wasn't paying attention.
"Fittings," came the sing-song reply. "Stop frowning like that, it's ugly. At least you get new clothes. All I get is your leftovers."
Raeger sighed sharply, the sound lost in music as her sister started to play. Elise would win if they took the argument to Mother, and Raeger wasn't angry enough to put up with the inevitable shouting match if she did that. The brat really did need practice, she'd get no argument there - she was months behind on music after spending the entire summer playing, still stumbling on chords and notations that had become second nature to the eldest and, for that matter, anyone with a passing competance in playing.
She stood a moment longer, until Elise made her first error, before resigning herself to a night cooped up in her room, and grabbed a book from the table before she left. In the dim illumination of the hall she could just make out the glint of a title she knew well: Tales From the Ancients.
The night passed with tales of children born from lotus blossoms and the long battle against the god of storms. Her dreams were filled with endless sands, shifting in time to Elise's music. Daylight, as always, came too quickly.
***
Morning brought a flurry of activity downstairs. Raefer avoided it, taking her breakfast in her room again and remaining under the pretense of finding something suitable to wear for the arrival of her guests. Bertha had laid a dress out before sunrise - one of the newer, nicer ones - but she didn't like the color very much. Too sanguine, too dark for her coloring, despite what her mother said it did for the apples of her cheeks. Laying it on a bit thick, wasn't she, with a shade like that? She couldn't think of a name for it that wasn't cliche.
"Isn't there anything else?" she asked plaintively, fingers hooked over the handles of her wardrobe. "The blue wool with the lace trimming?"
Maiya shook her head, eyes downcast. "Your dresses are still being worked."
Raeger stared at her a moment, then sighed sharply. She should have guessed the adjustments wouldn't be done overnight, but she thought this was nice timing on the part of Mother. Even she wouldn't meet Lawfer in a garden smock, no matter how little she cared for the idea of impressing them. These were the people she had to face for the rest of her life. Their impression had better be favorable.
"Alright then," she said reluctantly, arms sagging. She turned her back on the drab curtain of her dresses. "I'll finish my chocolate first, then." It would serve them right if she walked in with an ugly stain on her skirt - though it wouldn't show on the dark red, and the earfull she'd get-- she would be careful, even in her nightclothes.
"I am sorry." Maiya's hesitance made her look back. "This is what I am told."
Raeger shook her head as she sat down, trying to control her tone. "It isn't your fault. I'm not angry at you." The maid bowed and remained by the bedroom door, still avoiding her gaze in what she'd come to expect; it was some custom or other. The slave's posture deferred even when she had permission to lift her head - her shoulders curved down, her hands were clasped in a way that reminded Raeger of the day she'd arrived, with her wrists clamped together with iron manacles. She didn't know if this was a product of her training for housework, or if other Yamato people displayed the same habits. She'd never met another. "You may raise your head."
The maid obeyed, but did not look at her.
Mother says they thrive on abasement, she thought to herself. But Maiya does not look like she wants to grovel. She must be smart to have learned the language of the continent so fast. And she was smart to turn the other cheek when the household's offhand comments offended her dignity. Raeger wasn't sure she could muster the same bearing in that situation. Her own sister knew too well how to make the blood drain from her face, or how to make her angry. She kicked herself for it every time, yet gave in again and again.
"You don't want it," Maiya said slowly. "Why? It's so pretty."
She shrugged and sipped at her chocolate. It had cooled considerably in the short time she'd spent in the closet. "It's uncomfortable, and it probably won't be warm enough."
The maid glanced into the bedroom. The red hem peeked out at them, a vivid splash of color against the cream duvet. "You would prefer silk?"
"Silk?" Raeger spluttered, swallowing too quickly. "Are you mad? That would be freezing!" And it would cost a fortune, no less - she was lucky to have any at all in her collection.
Maiya tilted her head. "All of my winter robes were silk. I was never cold inside."
Raeger stared down at the dregs of her chocolate. "All of your clothes were silk?" She couldn't keep the incredulity out of her tone. Artolia's own princess, notorious for her spending on luxuries, wore wool or cotton more often than not. She hadn't meet Jelanda yet, and dreaded the opportunity, imagining another Elise, only twice as spoiled and with the ultimate authority of rank.
Rank meant so terribly much in the capitol. She supposed she was lucky to be somewhere just above middle, instead of at the bottom like this Yamato girl.
"You..." She examined her maid's face, the carefully kept hair, the absence of ear-piercings, which were the all-important sign of money and maturity for herself and Elise. "Were you rich? Ranked?"
There was a pause. "No..." She could see the wheels turn as Maiya composed her response. "We grow our silk. It is the girl's duty to spin and sew. When I was small..." She spread her hands, and for the first time Raeger noticed the rough spots on her fingertips, darker than the paleness of her palms. "When you get older, you weave. The loom is very heavy." Her hands clasped together again, this time at her waist in echo of Bertha. The pose didn't look quite right on her. "I served a warrior's lady when we were taken away. She also did this. All girls do. Rank does not matter."
"Was she - this lady - taken too?" Raeger asked.
Once again Maiya was slow to reply. "I... do not know where she is."
She stirred her chocolate, watching the cream swirl and darken, sprinkled with little flecks of froth. If Maiya were free, she might have envied her the dark, silky curtain of hair or her creamy skin. Her freedom from family strictures, maybe, if that wasn't the only kind of freedom the maid could claim. Raeger wouldn't mind freeing herself from her mother's commands, but to not know where she was - to wonder if she was alive, or if Elise was alive?
Father often said that Villnore would bend their necks and clamp them all in irons if they crossded the border; nobody ever forgot that their northern neighbor traded in all sorts of slaves, be they Yamato, or Artolian, or even their own people. Raeger hadn't taken it seriously before. There was a thick forest between central Artolia and the border, and winter was harsh beyond, on the mountain slopes, where Camille and Yudora were sprawled. The farmers would keep them supplied with slaves for a time, he said, but it was the necks of Artolia's peers they wanted to bend and break.
She thought Villnore would rather just kill them, but ever since Maiya was purchased, Raeger felt a distant chill when he mentioned it at the supper table. The tables could be turned. He spoke of deflecting the enemy with Camille as if it were a matter of course. Perhaps Hai-lan's leaders did the same thing, and thus Maiya was here serving her breakfast and lacing up her dresses.
"I'm sorry for asking," she said to break the silence, rising from the table. Her stomach was sinking, and she wished Bertha would bring another cup of chocolate, or even a plain mug of hot milk.
He wouldn't mention that to Lawfer or his father, would he, what he thought about Camille? They were en route from that region. Lawfer was posted there for the rest of the year.
Maiya followed her to the bedroom, where the new red dress was laid out across the foot of her bed, and the chair beside the nightstand heaped with linens and petticoats. Maybe she wouldn't be very cold at all, or her legs wouldn't be. The layers hung heavily from her waist, and her maid laced the corset slowly, tugging on the strings each time she looped them through another hook. Raeger gritted her teeth, but Maiya was kinder than her nursemaid, in that regard - she didn't pull as sharply as the other, instead making sure she could wedge her fingers between the boning and skin to determine how much room there was to breathe. She insisted they had nothing like these in Hai-lan, so Raeger was surprised at her sympathy.
"There was a visitor last night," the maid said when she had tied the strings and slipped the busk over. "A man, with a horse."
Raeger worked her shoulders, picking ineffectually at a wrinkle in the corset lining. It wouldn't show, but it was a little uncomfortable. "Not one of Marie's retainers, I suppose?"
"A stranger," the girl confirmed. "Not begging, he had money. I had to show him the temple."
"You had to... what?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "At night? They made you take him all the way over there?"
"He asked." Maiya brought the dress and held it up for Raeger to slip her arms into. "He knew Yamato words, so I did not mind."
"You shouldn't let them force you into things like that," Raeger replied, doing as bidden and letting the dress slip over her head. The maid did not respond, seemingly engrossed in the task of lacing the back up tightly.
Well, that was unusual. Even the slavers didn't know Japanese, from what Maiya had reluctantly revealed. Not many of them; it was the traders on the coast of Gerabellum, she guessed, who handled negotiations with whomever shipped the poor people over the sea. Melissa said as much. Who else needed to know? her friend asked in her last letter. They're here to work, not to speak.
"Is he still here?" she asked.
"I do not think so. I will ask."
Raeger sighed. Would Bertha let her go, even if he was there? Probably not. Lawfer wouldn't arrive for a while yet, some time in the afternoon at least, but it wasn't ruly for someone her age to associate herself with mysterious travelers who refused the basic tenets of hospitality. "Don't bother," she said when Maiya seemed about to leave. "Just... ask for a cup of warm milk?"
The maid bowed and left. Raeger tried to take a deep breath, and was relieved that she could almost do it without straining. She sat carefully on the edge of a chair by the window, afraid to wrinkle her skirt, and reached for her copy of legends.
Only a few were left from the night before, but she knew all of them well. None of the stories were from Yamato. There was one from Dipan about the great sages, and three from Crell Monferaigne about the battle maiden, whose blessing they invoked before battle. One featured the Lord of the Undead, but there was an entire volume just for stories about vampires and Hel's minions; it was Marie's favorite, but Raeger had grown slightly annoyed with the author over the years, because he couldn't make up his mind on the point of origin for his stories. Were all undead from Hel? Was their Lord her servant too?
Oh no, he said on page thirty. No, that great and terrible lord belonged to no one, not even Odin! Their battles were so great as to destroy all witnesses of them!
On page seventy, the great and terrible lord bent knee to Helheim. On page eighty-five, she knelt to him.
Legends were inconsistent by nature, she told herself, but the lack of unity made her avoid picking the book up again without someone else's encouragement. What made a vampire so terrifying, anyway? He couldn't even set foot out in the sunlight. A good douse of water would end him. There wasn't much charm in that.
References to the undead king in the book she held now, however, were more interesting. Maybe because war was made on him, and not the other way around. She couldn't tell what his character was like from the sparse descriptions - as if it could possibly be accurate, without the editor visiting his midnight palace. That was unlikely.
She heard Maiya return, and went into the other room for her milk. The maid slipped a note onto the table beside her before hurrying off with an apology, and its contents left Raeger slumping back in her chair.
'Marie will meet us in the capitol. Her father diverted their course directly to Artolia.'
Of course he did. Their visit would have been too good to be true.
***
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-06 05:40 pm (UTC)I've said what I can on the first half or so, earlier when you first posted it, but I like the new sections just as well. Although it makes me slightly angst to know that it's probably going to take a while to get finished (and I keep wishing Judas would show up sooner) objectively I can appreciate the time you're taking to build the setting and the characters up. I like it, anyway. And in a way it makes it a lot more satisfying this way (I've read too many stories where the action is contrived to all happen right off the first chapter, which works for some but just seem rushed for others). It's nice to slip in the foreshadowing a bit, there, but end on a note that suggests Raeger's mind to be elsewhere (i.e. on not getting to see Marie). She's dismissed the thought of the stranger for now, but it may yet come to haunt her in the long run~
On page seventy, the great and terrible lord bent knee to Helheim. On page eighty-five, she knelt to him.
That line in particular struck me. Maybe the way it stands out so starkly from the text surrounding it.
Some typos here and there, but that's pretty much to be expected. :D Nothing major.
I look forward to the next chapter, but you knew that already. ♥
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 09:27 am (UTC)Judas shouldn't take long to show up. He'll turn up before Jelanda, even though the princess will play a bigger part for the first half of the story. Right now I'm trying to build a vision of what life should be like, so when everything goes to hell - and it will, I assure you! quite far down! - it feels more real. It's one of those storylines that really wouldn't work with a fast-paced beginning.
Anyway, I estimate chapter four will be Judas's first appearance on stage, with Jelanda somewhere around five, unless it's convenient to fit them into the same chapter. That might be too much. The journal would explode.
Next chapter, up.
no subject
Date: 2007-07-10 11:11 am (UTC)How long was this drafted as again? XD Thirty chapters, give or take? Or has it gotten longer since? :0