the_plan

Samantha

She had no idea how she’d performed on the tests. She didn’t particularly care. Many of the questions were open-ended, and she’d answered them with what she knew. She hadn’t studied. She only barely knew astronomy, knew nothing of music (besides that Joan liked it), but knew math, and geometry, and rhetoric, probably. And enough about magic to pretend she knew more.

It was missing a lot of what she thought would be practical information, though. For instance, she knew how to ride a horse, and it didn’t test her on that. She didn’t know how to pick a lock, nor was she tested on that, but it would’ve been useful. The book she read on picking locks failed to help. Eventually, she just said “Ugh” and tried cutting the chains off the stable door, and when that didn’t work she just sat outside and waited an hour for the stablehand to show up.

The geometry was helpful, though. Inside the bag, she had constructed a bellows with a large tube, so she could circulate new air to prevent Vincent from suffocating. When she had first asked him to pass it up, he had tried smacking her with it, but after explaining that he would suffocate and die and that he should obey his princess who knows better than everyone and that both her and Vincent are being wasted at Northpoint, he tried smacking her harder. He eventually collapsed, and at that point she was able to grab it and begin squeezing.

She was decently confident he wouldn’t suffocate. Though, he might get banged up from everything bouncing around in there. She made sure to toss in his helmet, which was one of the items on his list.

Actually, the air might just pass through the fabric itself. …Actually, he’d totally be able to just cut his way out. Huh.

So she waited for the stablehand to show up (astronomy assisted in telling how close to dawn it was), failing to read a book on Vincent’s list, and when the stablehand did, she explained that Vincent had said she could ride a horse to relax after her tests. And when the stablehand said he hadn’t heard that from Vincent, she said “Uh.” And Vincent screamed “help” inside the bag and Samantha cringed and smacked the stablehand with the backpack and he hit the door and his head hit the lock and he fell to the ground and the bag clanked and Vincent screamed.

“Shit…” she said. “Are you alive?” she asked the air.

“Ugh…” said the bleeding stablehand leaning against the door.

“I’m going to kill you! Samantha! Samantha!” shouted her bag.

“Okay,” she said, and she reached into an outer pouch on the bag (which was a normal pouch, and was the same size on the inside as the outside) and placed a few pennies on the stablehand as recompense, then ran in and failed to hop on a horse then failed to hop on a horse then realized the horse’s door was still locked then unlocked the door then failed to no wait she got it wait it needs a saddle oh there’s a saddle and then the stablehand got up and started stumbling away from the building and then a saddle got placed on the horse but it got placed backwards and she had to remember if a saddle had a backwards or forwards then she remembered no force over distance is ‘work’ and she didn’t actually learn the definition of energy and the horse started complaining and she put the things on it and the stablehand shouted “help, I’m hit,” and Vincent complained and Samantha failed to get on the horse and Samantha got on the horse and the horse complained and she started moving and she left the stable and Vincent screamed and screamed and screamed.

And then things were uneventful for the next few hours.

Exactly as planned.

The pennies should’ve been enough for the stablehand’s medical expenses. Probably. ‘Healing magic’ was a thing. She didn’t really know how it worked, but she knew the fraction of the Vanguard membership fee that went towards health insurance. Though counting the coins later, she realized she gave him 2 fewer than she should’ve.

Though, did he even grab them? Did he even notice she threw them on him?

“Hey Vincent, are you still alive?”

“I shouldn’t have been so nice to you. So naive. So stupid.” Less angry, more resigned.

“You’re not stupid, Vincent.” Her arms were positioned awkwardly, so as to hold the bellows with both hands (she wasn’t sure if the fabric was airtight or not), tube going over her shoulder into the bag, while her hands were also holding the reins. “If you were stupid, I wouldn’t have abducted you.”

“You came here tied up, why did I think that just because you were a princess, you’d be refined.”

She considered claiming she was refined. Her mouth failed to form the words.

“And now I’m going to die. I’m being kidnapped by a maniac and I’m going to die.”

“You’re not going to die.”