The rest of the month passed within the confines of Jason’s manor with illusions sustained at all hours. The party was surrounded by a sea of servants and slaves and statues along the walls, paintings and carpets and baths and all other manner of luxuries, and in that time Eris taught Aletheia Arcane Semblance in case of emergency and she continued her practice of Blink, so that soon she needed to do nothing but close her eyes and open them again to navigate the mansion’s interminable corridors and banistered staircases.
But never, once the matter of Moronos was settled, did she venture beyond Diana’s gardens, for at all times there lingered two executioner’s axes over her and her companions.
The first was that of the Seekers above their necks. When it came down the blow would be swift and fatal and they would not know if the strike was precise enough to kill until it was too late. But two weeks passed. There came no sign of the Cult Custodians. No word of Lukon. No hint of pursuit. The trail seemed silent.
The second axe was the Archon himself, hanging, ready to drop—yet not on the neck, aiming for the kill, but instead inches over their ankles. For their lunatic plans to succeed they needed the old man to stay alive, for he alive was little different from him dead; but a cadaver who still drew breath was allowed to occupy the throne, while a cold corpse was hauled off to the sepulcher. Once Prince Alexandros ascended to the rulership of the city there would be no way to usurp Hierax’s throne. The disorder of the current day would be vanquished and the opportunity for revolution crushed. For now, there was still a chance.
That meant time was not on their side. If the Archon was to die, the executioner would let slip his second axe and cut off their feet. There would be nowhere left to run. Their plans would all lie in ruins. They might survive, yet the next strike would doubtless prove fatal.
Magic kept Eris busy. That was why she volunteered to instruct Aletheia. Rook was another convenient distraction, but he spent most of his free time during daylight with his brother. Another reason to dislike Khelidon. The two talked endlessly.
----------------------------------------
Summer approached. Funds were put up to fashion a suit of armor for Rook, for his competition in the Kathar Tournament. He spent hours at practice with a lance. Exercising. Fencing. Riding horses. He could focus like hardly anyone Eris knew when he needed to, so that soon even his interest in her seemed to wane. She tried her best not to think on it.
Then came the first of the Month of the Hare, and the wedding ball for Khelidon’s cousin.
When she showed him the dress she bought some weeks earlier for the purpose of traveling the city undetected, his eyes went wide once more.
“Where did Rook find you?” he said.
“In fact I found him,” she said. “Wasting away on a Vandens street.”
“He has all the luck. Oldest born, out for the massacre, and you to take him in like the lost dog he was.”
Eris folded her arms and stared at him. “I would not go so far to say that, either.”
“Then what would you say? The two of you are—engaged, are you not?”
He was trying to flirt, or at least be friendly, and she was not in a mood to participate. “Your brother has done much to earn my favor, Khelidon. Do not think you have it yourself so easily.”
Khelidon considered this, but at length he nodded, and he said, “You look splendid. We could take you in rags and the courtiers would be awed. But you deserve something tailor-made, don’t you think?”
“I think I look well as I—what? Tailor-made?”
“They sew the very fabric around your body.”
“Indeed? And here I thought a tailer was employed by the kennelmaster! Please do explain this profession in more detail, for I am so ignorant of your ways in this marvelous city!”
Khelidon stared at her. “Has my brother ever told you that you are a minx?” he said.
She glared. “To him I am but a passive pigeon.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute. My leg is crippled, Eris, not my mind. Now, the tailor—”
“Yes, thank you, I do know what a tailor is!” she snapped. Then she hesitated. “But…”
But she had never considered it. Having her own dress, made specifically for her figure, that would not look far too small for her frame. Such things were for other people. Occasionally things were sewn for her, but never anything of splendor. Yet was she not functionally nobility? Why not?
“…‘tis not safe,” she suggested.
“Even under your spell? Why? Think the seamstresses will recognize you by the shape of your bust?”
“If they stare at my bust as oft as you, then many may well indeed.” She liked attention, but she saw no advantage to this man relative to Rook. He was less handsome, less able, crippled, and not heir to anything.
“I apologize if I offend you. Beauty like yours should be admired, however.”
“You will need to try much harder than that if you wish to impress me,” Eris said.
He limped toward a door. “We’ll see about that. Come, I’ll take you to a shop I know. There should be time enough to get something made—and in the fashion of the court. Which I’m afraid…this is not.” He gestured her up and down.
That was how she found herself surrounded by women, being measured, while a serious man with hazy eyes stared at her in her unmentionables. Apparently this was normal. Such vulnerability compelled her to leave the arcane focus behind, and without it she had to sustain the illusions with more concentrated focus. She felt very self-conscious. Firstly like at any moment a nearby seamstress would notice the spell, for any magician that close would feel it; then, quite strangely, like she was in a different world entirely, one where she did not belong.
She did not like being touched. She did not like being poked. She hated feeling exposed and weak before so many without any true power.
When she told the tailor for what she needed the new dress he took careful note. When she added on her preferences, he shouted out at her in a Veshod accent, “You are goink to Keep Korakos and vant to dress like alley whore! No! No, no, no! Not for any voman, much less you! Ve vill dress you properly!”
Eris wanted desperately to respond that she was, in fact, an adventurer, and so she dressed however she saw fit. But she held her tongue and resisted her urges to vaporize this storefront—he was right, court fashion was best to be observed.
The dress was delivered the next day. It was so small she had no notion how she might wear it, and one of Diana’s servants had to help her put it on. Quite unlike anything she had ever worn before it covered every inch of her skin, to the collarbone and wrists to the tips of her toes. A fitting garment for the winter, perhaps. The fabric was blue and purple and looked outrageously gaudy when her hair was blonde, but soon she realized that was the point of such attire.
Yet for all it covered, the dress was very tight. It clung to her skin like her Spellward gauntlet—which, resistant to glamor, would have to be left behind during her clandestine mission. Looking at herself Eris almost found this style to be more revealing for lack of what it showed, and although she wanted to hate the tailor for condescending her, she fell in love with his work at once.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The morning before the ball she spent hours in her room experimenting with style. She decided not to take her enchanted jewelry, or any she usually wore, in case she might be recognized with it—but there was plenty else to wear. She did take the jade ward, concealing it with the shape of a silver armband with her spell. Next: diadems, necklaces, earrings; and then there was hair to consider…
At some point in this process there was a knock at the door. “Leave me,” Eris commanded.
“Eris,” came the voice of Diana. “I was wondering if you might want help, getting everything ready?”
She stopped to stare into a mirror. She wanted nothing to do with Diana. What help could she possibly provide? She was about ready to say as much when the actress added,
“I know Khelidon. He’s a sweet man, but he doesn’t know court fashion. I do.”
A sigh. This operation was too important to squander on pride. “Fine,” Eris said. “Enter.”
So she did, and so there came Diana. Eris did not bother regarding her. “You look stunning. You really are—can I ask, Eris—how old are you?”
“Is that why you have come?” Eris said, somewhat aghast.
“No,” Diana laughed, “but you must be very young. It’s just that you look much older. And act it, too.”
Here Eris finally turned. “I am nineteen. Is that surprising?” Her curiosity was genuine, although not pronounced.
“Yes, a little. You’re very mature.”
“Compared with whom? Jason?”
“Does it offend you to hear that you’re mature?”
“No, but I know it already to be true, and you are hardly surrounded by competent adults. And how old are you? Forty?”
“I’m twenty-five. You don’t really think that, do you? I’d like it if we could be friends, we don’t need to insult each other.”
Eris looked her over again. No, Diana did not look old. Nor ugly, though she did not compare to Eris, but she was in poor shape, and her condition had devolved in the weeks since they first met. “No,” Eris said reluctantly. “You do not look forty. You are fat, however.”
“I’m pregnant,” Diana said warmly.
Eris inhaled deeply. “Ah.”
She smiled in a repulsively genuine way. “Jason doesn’t want anyone to know, but—the girls gossip, don’t we? It’s getting hard to hide anyway.”
“Is that why you’ve come? To gossip? I will save you the trouble and say I am not interested.”
Diana shook her head. “No. I meant what I said. I want to help you prepare. Your hair—can I braid it? Let me show you the style the ladies favor—”
She rose and Eris flinched away, but she relented in a stupor when her eyes caught Diana’s abdomen in the mirror. So she was pregnant. Her hands found Eris’ hair and began to work. The women watched each other’s reflections.
“So,” Eris said. “That is the price you have paid in exchange for the life of wealth. ‘Tis one many women would agree to, yet one must wonder if ‘twas worth your beauty? Your career? Your freedom?”
Diana knew how to style hair. Her hands were firm and quick. Eris had already been seated at a vanity and she raided its drawers for pins as she proceeded to fashion hanging braids off the side of Eris’ head. Each was then wrapped all the way around the back of her head in a halo, with the two longest strands on either side left to hang loose beside her jawline, while the single braid in back hung down her neck, trailing down her spine in a thick strand fastened in place by all the others woven above it. The style was incomprehensibly intricate. Eris cared much for beauty, but in that moment she realized she did not have a tenth the knowledge of an actress like Diana. She was an infant in the world of styling. It was more humbling than any confrontation with Regal magic.
Her respect for the domesticated Seris grew. But only a small amount.
The whole demonstration took what seemed an eternity. They spoke all the while.
“I wouldn’t quite put it that way,” Diana said. “There are roles for mothers in the theatre.”
“Yet not the role of Seris,” Eris said. “Nor those any girl dreams of playing.”
“Seris is a woman. She could be a mother someday, too.”
“Is that part of the play?” Eris rolled her eyes.
Diana smiled. “No. There might be a sequel someday, though. You never know.”
“Let us hope not. Not unless royalties are paid in proper order.”
“I’d like to think we’re paying them now. But the truth is, I’m not much like her in real life, even though we look the same.”
Debatably. Diana continued,
“This was what I wanted, as much as Jason. Maybe more. It was also inevitable. Some sacrifices might be made, but the reward is worth it.”
“Unless you die in labor,” Eris said.
Another braid tightened. A golden pin inserted.
“Eris,” Diana said, condescension in her tone, “I know you haven’t been around other women often—”
“And how do you know that?” Eris growled.
A tug on the hair. “I’ve been talking to Aletheia.”
“About me?”
“You’ve come up.”
Eris didn’t care what anyone thought about her, although she would prefer if they mentioned her only in envy and admiration, but for some reason the notion of this conversation unnerved her. “I am certain she has had much to say,” Eris said with some uncertainty.
Diana was still polite and warm, smiling as she said, “Nothing mean. But you and Rook have been…romantically involved for quite some time, haven’t you?”
Eris thought she sensed the wind’s direction. “Are you envious?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m happy for you. What I mean to say is that if you spend enough time in his company—you know my condition is inevitable? When Aletheia mentioned you had mostly traveled with men, I had wondered if the thought hadn’t often occurred to you.”
Eris had been stabbed—on more than one occasion—and she felt much the same reaction in the moment that followed. No pain, but the draining of blood from all her body, a tingling numbness overcoming her, a sense of dread: the onset realization of death on the horizon, and ringing in her ears. The one difference was that now she still possessed the power of speech.
“Do you think I am a child?” Eris said.
“No, of course not. But you’re young—”
Eris pulled away from her, which was enormously painful, and turned to look her in the eyes directly. “You are aware I am a magician?” She let the glamor fall. “Unlike you, I do not merely pretend.” To demonstrate she conjured small flames on each of her fingertips and curled them momentarily in the air.
“Of course,” Diana said, reeling, blinking.
“Then you would know that such matters do not concern me.” Eris settled back into the seat, and the styling resumed.
“…can magicians not have children?”
“We ‘can,’ yet we rarely do.”
“Then you know some spell?”
“Why do you interrogate me so?” Eris snapped.
Diana sighed. “Because you’re just like Seris. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
That explanation did nothing to calm her, but Eris decided to spell it plainly: “I will be simple. Were your fate to befall me, which fortunately it has not, remedying the condition would be as simple as reaching out with my mind and snuffing out the parasite like a tapeworm within me. That is the end of this discussion.”
But Diana wasn’t quite finished. “And what would Rook think of that?”
“Rook would never know, so he would think nothing. He is a man and men are idiots.”
Yet for some reason the thought made her shudder. Everything about this conversation made her deeply uncomfortable. She did not enjoy thinking about these things. Eris enjoyed being a woman; she liked the attention, she liked the indulgences of femininity, the trappings of beauty, and above all else, men. But she hated subservience. She loathed the very idea of marriage and motherhood and considering her own proximity to such fates that were, to her, worse than death, as bad as being made a Servitor, made her feel something like the doe that stares down the hunter holding his bow.
A long silence followed as Diana finished braiding Eris’ hair. It was a lengthy process, and once finished the result was…very strange. She looked more dignified, more statuesque, than normal, which was saying a great deal, but also far more chaste, tamer, somehow simpler. Like a supplicant girl to the Cult of the Aether, her hair all out from her eyes.
“There,” the actress said. “You’ll fit in splendidly now. What do you think?”
“…I hardly recognize myself,” Eris said.
“Now you know how I feel!” Diana said. She put a hand on Eris’ shoulder. “Good luck. Oh!” She designated a selection of earrings and a necklace. “These will look best on you.”
With that she departed, slipping back out through the doorway. Eris was left feeling very strange. She whispered a low ‘thank you,’ but Diana was already gone.
Then came Rook and Khelidon. Rook rushed to kiss her when he saw her; he was sweaty from practice and smelled like sports, but she was happy for the embrace, happy to taste him for a moment.
“You look spectacular,” he whispered against her mouth. “More than spectacular. Like a queen.”
Eris giggled. “One day, my sweet.” And she meant it.
He held her a little too tightly. “Why can’t I come again?”
“You’re a fugitive wanted to hang,” Khelidon said.
“Oh,” Rook said. He looked to Eris. “That’s right. Can’t I come anyway?”
“There will be time to play dress-up later,” Eris said. “And perhaps if all goes well, dress-off too.” She left him and stepped to Khelidon. “You are ready?”
He was dressed in a doublet, fine and high-collared, and he was well-groomed. He was a handsome man. He was Rook. “Your carriage awaits.”
They had discussed much over the last weeks. The plan was set. Their covers rehearsed. The story known. So the only step forward was forward. Funny how this most exciting of journeys intimidated Eris more than a pit filled with demons.
Khelidon offered her an arm. She considered it for a long time. Then she glanced back to Rook, who stared at her longingly, lustfully, and she almost couldn’t bring herself to leave. But she remembered what was at stake.
She took Khelidon by the elbow, and they departed for the ball.