tied_up

Samantha

There was once a king by the name of Reimond Day. A former farmhand, he had risen up, encouraged others to do so, slew the lichdragon Holomorpheus, planned the defeat of the necromancer Casse, and sat on the throne. And he sat, and he sat, and he sat. No one paid it much mind. They hadn’t much need for a king, and a lifetime of minor idolatry seemed sufficient recompense for the lack of tyranny.

It is annoying, thought his daughter, Samantha Day. The past is never recompense for the present. Maybe what he did was great, but he’s neglecting his omnipresent responsibility now. And the people of the land didn’t care. What if he started ‘investing’ in magical research? Or infrastructure? Or an actual standing army?

She knew several of her siblings shared this view, or at least, close enough that they could release to eachother. It wasn’t lost on her that they found her impulsive, uneducated, and uncollaborative, though.

And indeed, when Samantha Day had learned Quincy Day had jumped off a cliff, though she held it together for a few months, Samantha Day had inevitably destroyed several rooms in one of her half-brother’s houses. As recompense, she was tied up and shipped up to Northpoint Academy, a week from Felkner.

Her anger was palpable. Everyone was stupid. Grampa. Holstram. Libri.

Quincy was stupid for killing himself, and everyone was stupid for thinking she was the same as him. He could’ve stayed in Penbarrow forever, doing nothing, helping assemble ovens or finding novel ways to use magic to assist with the harvest. He always enjoyed finding novel applications for magic…

Lionel was stupid for overreacting to his wrecked house. For one, his house was bad. Natural causes were bound to destroy the entire neighbourhood in time. He could, if he wanted to, assert his birthright to get something more well-constructed. Or at least, inhomogeneous. But no, it was close to the Felkner Vanguard Guild, and that was all he cared about. It would’ve been easy, he could just ask Anisa to give him a house, or a room in her manor, and she’d probably oblige. And besides, it’s not like they couldn’t afford to fix it. When the people are taxed, where do you think that money goes?

Anisa was stupid for generally hating every suggestion Samantha gave for improving Felkner. Yes, Anisa, I get it, I’m a reckless, soulless, evil person, because I thought it was funny when Quincy set the foyer on fire, or dropped rats from the ceiling. Yes, I get it, you want the Vanguard under your thumb because some fraction of them are unhinged, destructive abominations. Yes, you’d rather I kill myself too, and work directly with Weathers. But, you moron, you’re not judging the suggestions, you’re judging the people. A bridge in the north would allow for more crime to move from Blueadder to Stonegrove, yes, but that’s why we station more guards up there, and kill the people who do crime. As if having downsides is a reason to ignore the benefits.

Weathers was just stupid for all sorts of reasons. Everyone dies, stop being so afraid of it. I’m afraid of death, too, but not so much that I lock my body in a bank vault, or in some chest under the sea, or wherever it is. And stop trying to cut me out of discussions with Anisa, I’m technically in charge of the guild, it goes Reimond, Anisa, me, the board, and the guy who is elected by the board, and you’re only that guy for so long.

Joan… no, Joan wasn’t stupid, but she is an ass. Actually, no, she was stupid for not knowing her place, but Quincy was stupid for tolerating it. But she couldn’t have known he would’ve tolerated it. So, she was stupid for being an ass when she couldn’t have known being an ass was a valid position to hold. Oh, but that was all years ago…

No, Joan wasn’t stupid. She may have been at some point, but not anymore.

Verris is probably stupid for letting this happen, but he was probably kept in the dark the day they tied me up and threw me in the back of the wagon.

And then there was Roe, who was stupid for following unjust orders, wasting two weeks of her life driving to and from Northpoint. She was also stupid for not getting additional security (maybe dad had already checked the entire path?) and she was stupid for pretending to be mute so she didn’t have to engage with me.

It took a few days to realize that yes, everyone was colluding, they were aware of the tied up princess in the back of the wagon, and they wouldn’t help her. The logistics were dumbfounding. Reimond wasted the time and effort to ensure no merchants or otherwise armoured caravans would react to the screaming girl, yet he wouldn’t invest in a standing army. Or better infrastructure. Reimond Day was unequivocally the stupidest of them all.

She’d get her arms untied to eat, or to read. She’d considered strangling Roe, but she wasn’t sure how to do so without killing her. That, and Roe could easily overpower her. And she wasn’t confident she could get these horses to stop and go. And she expected if someone saw her, they’d just tie her back up and send her back on her way. Strangling Roe would definitely be cathartic, though. She made a mental note to do so when there’d be no consequences.

The books Roe had brought were boring and made no sense, nor could she deduce on whose authority they’d been provided. ‘Kinematics’, ‘induction’, ‘dissolution’, ‘transmutation’, ‘thaumodynamics’, ‘calculus’, ‘finite automata and prophecy machines’. She liked words in concept, but words needed context, which the books failed to provide. Everything was all arrows and circles, numbers were letters and letters were numbers. She thought Roe was just the Vanguard stablewoman, and probably illiterate. But, the books gave something to pretend to do while imagining fake scenarios of kicking Roe out of the front of the wagon, trampling her, turning the wagon around, and forcing an apology from all the supposed friends back home.

Ugh.

The food was fine. Bread and bread and some butter and bread and a bit of pork and bread. She wasn’t sure if this was some psychological game she was inadvertently winning. Maybe they expected the princess would have higher expectations for food. She did, she preferred beef, but she wouldn’t let herself think that, lest they win.

Everything was a damn psychological game with everyone and everyone was constantly losing. Or maybe that’s just what they wanted you to think. And the term ‘psychology’ didn’t even make sense, it was only tangentially related to psychomancy. ‘Telology’ or ‘animology’ may fit better.

There was the possibility she was being shipped out right now so she wouldn’t get in the way of the imminent coup. Maybe she’d return in 3 years, and the map would be completely redrawn. Felkner would be split in 2, and 1 of them would be the new capital.

No, no, she’s, I’m, just being paranoid. If there were a coup, everyone would want me on their side. All that talk Agarma and Rose had had about stabbing Reimond in the back and taking over were jokes, right?

Dammit, why hadn’t she done that when she had the chance. Well, it was good that she hadn’t, no one had stopped her deportation, so probably no one would’ve sided with her.

She was going stupid.

She’d been staring at a book on spell circle primitives for five minutes. The index had repeatedly told her there was a ‘Merl interpretation’ and an ‘Animist interpretation’ and an ‘Atomos interpretation’ and then she’d forgotten and the index had told her again ‘Merl Animist Atomos’ and she remembered the last book’s index that told her ‘axioms predicates sets functions’ and the book before that that told her ‘fire bellows ore cast’ and she decided to stop reading and stop thinking and drop her book to the wagon’s floor.

“Roe,” said Samantha’s paranoid mouth, to the driver’s back, “Putting aside your fake muteness, do you have telepathy?”

No response. Not even a turn.

Technically, it wasn’t a week. 6 days. But Grampa, Libri, Holstram, Shiron, et cetera, was it boring. She almost admitted she actually read the books. Her hectic time at the Vanguard had spoiled her, maybe. Penbarrow was slow, she’d survived that, she could survive unbuttered bread. She was so bored, she almost thought about how she could be blamed for the predicament she was in, and how she could change her behaviour to avoid it in the future. But no. She was blameless, and this would never happen again.

“Hey Roe, what’s a linear operator?” “Hey Roe, what’s a hertzo?” “…a nolton?” “…a thaum?” “…an infinitesimal?” She already knew ‘ana’† and ‘kata’‡, though, she wasn’t completely ignorant.

Roe didn’t engage. She probably didn’t know, either.

And finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, finally, they arrived.

† /aˈna/

‡ /kaˈta/

One of her many brothers, Agarma Day, was in charge of the land, the city, and the academy. They hadn’t spoken for a while. From what she remembered, though, he was a genius, as much as her. She much preferred a genius dictatorship to a stupid lack of leadership. She expected to meet with him when they’d parked…

arrival

Samantha

Hector Whiteclaw was all too accommodating to the kidnapping.

“Anisa!” he proclaimed, walking down the steps of his manor. “How many years has it been?”

This was an instance where she was ungagged. “Different daughter.”

“Ah! Well, I only just learned a princess was arriving a few hours ago. The details were sparse.”

Doubtful. Others on the trail were clearly informed. Probably. “I’m sure,” said Samantha. “Was Anisa tied up like this when she arrived?”

He opened the side of the wagon. Bound legs and upper arms.

“Oh! Ha! No, no she wasn’t.”

And that was that.

She decided, first piece of scratch vellum she got, she’d list everyone who’d wronged her, and to what degree, and maybe a fitting punishment. Probably not in Saxle, though, she’d need to invent some kind of code so no one would learn about it. Something that wasn’t ‘easily invertible’. Regardless, with his jarring cavalierity, Magister Whiteclaw was quickly topping the list.

A thought occurred. Why didn’t she just put everyone else who could inherit the throne on the list. That would only be what, twenty-four, twenty-five people, and she was apathetic to most of them.

“I see you’re already getting started with your education!” he said, eyeing the physics book she had forgotten she was gripping (despite her binds), half-open. “Should expect nothing less from the Days! So brilliant, and so driven!”

“Sure. Uh, yes, thank you.”

“All those books should be for our library. I wouldn’t expect someone just entering our college to fully understand, so don’t feel bad if you didn’t understand some of it!”

Maybe if she’d burned the books, they’d have turned around. Oh, but the thought of doing so made her sad.

“I assume she can be untied?” he asked to the driver, who simply shrugged.

“Of course she can,” said Samantha, daintily folding the book with half-tied arms. “What’s she going to do? Run into the snow and die?”

“For the more adventurous types, we like to do some conditioning first.”

She paused, frowned, then failed to catch her tongue. “I understand you’re attempting to be open-ended, with the intent that I think of the worst possible thing ‘conditioning’ could be, but in doing so, you necessarily reveal that the process isn’t as bad as that. Please be specific, so I can have an appropriate level of terror.”

He simply stared. She turned the book over, admiring its construction, avoiding his eyes.

How had that just tumbled out, that was at least two coherent thoughts, in service of making her life worse, to the man who could do so. Maybe all the reading and bread made her so smart her mouth generated a brain separate from her own. Maybe it was always there, and it was just growing bigger.

“Who’s your mom, princess?”

“Carline Mallow.”

“Ah, yes.”

“I find I take more after my father, though.”

“Oh really?”

And then she managed to snare it. “Perhaps we could discuss this inside. I’d like to warm up, and remove the pins from my legs.”

She could just lie about her name.

Wait, no, Roe couldn’t be illiterate, how would she be able to communicate at all? Was it only shrugging, nodding, flipping her bow-drawing finger? Presumably, then, she could just write out ‘her name is Samantha’ and hand it to him.

…It’s all moot, regardless. Doubtless, hidden among all the books and bags, was some documentation she hadn’t found in her 6 days of boredom detailing exactly what her father wanted to be done with her, if his level of ignorance wasn’t completely an act.

She’d called herself ‘Samsara’ for a while, alongside Quincy calling himself ‘Quintessence’. Sounded powerful. Important. Apparently meant something about death and life in some other tongue. The name was a choice she was making for herself, and forcing others to go along with, because she was a princess and princesses needed respect.

Joan and Quincy and Verris had gone along with it. Though, Joan was their maid at the time, and Verris went along with most of the things she said…

“My name is Samsara Day,” she said.

“She would call her daughter that,” replied Hector.

Walking next to him, Roe nodded and tittered.

“Hey Roe, are you mute?” said Samantha.

“No, why?” said Roe.

She probably shouldn’t kill Roe, nor should she do anything that’s traceable to her. Maybe Roe’s favourite scarf will have accidentally flew off a cliff. Hopefully she had an emotional attachment to it.

Maybe she should kill her.

Maybe she should just kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, now, or at least bite them and gouge out their eyes, before she’s executed, and sent to some terrible afterlife, or her soul is just permanently destroyed. Eternal darkness. Seeing as to how everyone hates her. But what a waste of her non-stupidity, which seems to be lacked by oh-so-many. Why couldn’t it just be trivial, to tell everyone that they are all stupid, that they don’t know how to act, that they just need to be her slave and do everything she said, and it’d be alright.

“You’re an asshole, Roe. A week.”

“I’ve spoken to you before. At the guild.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I thought we were joking.” She turned to Hector, walking down the hall. “She thought I was mute.”

Roe was led to a hall, Samantha was led to an office, and instructed to wait in a chair until Hector would return some minutes later. He gestured to a clock on the wall and told her that when the big hand moved from the one thick line to the next thick line, he would be back. She said nothing.

Everyone should have a clock.

Well, no. There are those who don’t deserve a clock. They should be killed or enslaved or ‘conditioned’, as Hector so cavalierly put it. Really, Anisa was pretty good with that, though she didn’t execute as much as she should. Perhaps it was one of the few things they agreed on, maintaining a functioning society required a firm hand, even if they disagreed on what a firm hand looked like. But no, that’s what Casse and Holomorpheus did, and so reasonable law enforcement is tyranny.

Though, who can be expected to follow laws when so many are illiterate, ugh. And when no one actually cares to read. And when books are so expensive.

She had had a lot of time to read at Penbarrow.

He had a bookshelf, as well. Presumably, there was some book assembly workshop nearby. For the quantity of books needed for a school, they may have moved from manually scribing to using some type of stamps. Or maybe there was some form of magic that allowed easy book duplication. If they had the latter, she’d definitely need to bring it back to Felkner…

The desk was sufficient. It was the bread and bread and bread of desks. Doubtless Hector had a better desk somewhere else, for more important work.

The chair she sat in was the same, though it at least had a cushion.

Shame. From the clocks, to the books, to the desks and chairs, so much time was spent recreating the same objects…

Hector entered. He sat across from Samantha at the desk, laying out several pieces of paper, a stamp, and an inkwell.

“Samsara Day?”

She was surprised. “Yes.”

“Would you prefer that, or Samantha?”

“…Either is fine.” Dammit.

“Samantha Sarah Day. I’m assuming your father had it explained how things work here?”

Blink. “No, he didn’t.”

“Oh, no problem. At the Academy, we take the elite of all ages, and instill in them the precepts of the octovium. I expect a princess is already familiar?”

“Familiar, yes.”

“We’ll first conduct a series of tests to determine your aptitude in each subject, to assign you fitting classes and teachers. Once that’s been decided, you’ll have the freedom to choose electives.”

“‘Electives’?”

“Classes to enhance understanding in more specific subject matters. Your father indicated you should be allowed to choose.”

“He really said that?”

Hector held a paper. “He also said you may call yourself Samsara.”

“What electives did Anisa take when she was here?”

He consulted a paper, then flipped it face down. “I don’t have the permission to say.”

Samantha was confident Anisa hadn’t taken any. Anisa generally seemed of the opinion that the most competent people were those at Felkner, and so if any extra education were to be had, it should be had there. Presumably, Reimond had allowed her that choice.

“You can see a complete list of the offered electives after your tests. You’ll spend your first week being moved in to your room, and given summaries of what each test entails.”

She briefly hung on the word ‘entails’ for seemingly no reason. Maybe it reminded her of something in one of the books she’d not read, or maybe she just liked its shape.

“My son Vincent can take any questions on particularities. He’s rather excited to meet a princess.”

She thought she should be flattered, but wasn’t. “We’re not exactly an uncommon breed.”

“Up here, you are.”

She wandered, and talked to other students, and remained vaguely annoyed, and considered diving into the snow, and found her room.

The bed was buttered bread.

Roe gave Samantha a crate, which had formerly been buried under books in the wagon. “Do not open in a small area.”

“What is this, a bomb?”

“A special backpack. From Anisa.”

“Did she take Quincy’s hyperspace chest and turn it into a bag?”

“I don’t know. Bye.” And Roe walked away.

She was irritated her irritation towards Roe seemed to be fading.

Indeed, inside the crate was a ‘backpack’, a pink bag with arm straps and buckles. Fine material, mediocre craftsmanship. She pulled it out — it was quite heavy — and turned it upside down, onto her bed in her small room.

Out poured three letters, several clothes, paper, poorly bound books, more clothes, a knife, a few fine books, a brush, and coin. One letter was from Anisa labelled ‘Read 1st’, one was a letter from Lionel…

So they had all colluded, her father and her sister and her brother and Roe and probably the guild. Great. Was nice of Lionel to pack her clothes, though. She’d read later, when she was less angry at them. She swapped to a dress and scooped the excess clothes back in. It wasn’t hyperspace, so turning it upside down probably would affect the gravity inside… and it was definitely larger on the inside than the outside… and, it seemed to weigh less than it should…. Some kind of stipo.

All she could think was, how annoying would it be to need to take into account objects like this at security checkpoints. Could one make a cloak that was bigger on the inside, and fill it with weapons, volatile chemicals, monsters? At least this came from Anisa, presumably she had started to take that into account…

Letter from Hendrik. Ah, that explained it. Though, she’d generally expect better craftsmanship from him…

She wasn’t angry at him, so she opened it.

Samantha. As per Her Highness Anisa Day’s first request, I’ve constructed a Woman’s Pink Stipospace Backpack with Toggleable Antigravity Crystal to assist with your studies. Testing indicates the crystal has a charge of 80 thaum-hours, which should counteract 10 kg for 8 hours, every day. Assume it’s less, as it may have recharged over the course of our tests. One can adjust force output.

As per Her Highness Anisa Day’s second request, I hope this letter finds you alive. If Quincy truly was assassinated,

She put the letter down. He was playing the game, too. He should know better. No one cared to know Quincy enough to understand exactly why he would’ve killed himself, and instead used the lack of understanding to justify paranoia, blame, and perhaps treason.

Not that she was opposed to any of that, in principle. It was just annoying they couldn’t be upfront about it.

spells

Samantha

A man appeared in her open door. “You look busy.”

Had she left the door open when she was changing? For her sake, she needed to get out of her head. “Not particularly,” she said. “In fact, I feel profoundly un-busy at the moment.”

“I suspect you have yet to be given the placement test schedule.” He was shorter than her, though she was unfortunately lanky. He wore an unadorned, blue suit and a red cravat. Had she put on her red dress? Yes, good. It was her favourite.

“Your assumption is correct, but your conclusion is not,” she said. “Do you know the phrase, ‘you can lead a horse to water’?”

“No.”

“You can stab a princess in the back and drag her, tied up, away from her supposed friends, but you can’t force her to be a… puritan student.”

“You plan to spurn your education out of spite, then?”

“Maybe. I haven’t—”

“I heard about the constriction, that’s terrible! I’d hate everyone involved for doing that, too.”

Blink. “Thank y—”

“Well, no, hate may be a bit far, but I would need to re-evaluate my relationships.”

Blink. Was he telling her that she was overreacting? How would he know? What did Roe tell him? “Are you trying to get inside my head?”

“What? No. Sorry, I’m a bit nervous. You’re a princess! It’s mad.”

“Yeah, uh, what part?”

“All of it! So undignified, being tied up, dragged up here! It’s a good place to be, and you’re going to get a great education, and the magisters are all so friendly and smart, but you should be guided by a whole procession, and there should be those instrument things people blow into, and you should have a ton of guards!”

“…Horns?”

“Yeah, those long blowy things. You should have those!”

“You, uh.” Maybe only talking to herself and a mimic mute for a week had numbed her social skills. Or maybe it was just him. “You’re Vincent?”

“Yes, Your Highness.” He bowed slightly. “Vincent Whiteclaw. Here to help with whatever you may need while at the Academy! I’m a student, too, have been for 6 years, and I gotta say, it’s extremely fun and rewarding!”

Instant concern. “6 years? Is that normal?”

“Oh no, most finish in 2.”

Blink. “Am I most?”

“I don’t know?” He smiled.

“Has anyone finished in 1?”

“Oh, yes, but they usually have prior education.”

“Has anyone finished in less than 1?”

“Well, yes, but it’s v—”

“Could someone conceivably finish by doing so good on the initial exams that there’s no class to place them in?”

His eyes widened, as did his smile. “Do you want to try?”

“Only if I know it’s an option, first.”

He left her to hang her clothes and read letters.

She began reading Anisa’s ‘Read First’ second.

Samantha. I hope you had a good trip.

I speak benevolently when I say, you deserve this. You should’ve been sent up to Northpoint rather than Penbarrow all those 7 years ago. Our ‘family’ is all too apt to put the cart before the horse with civic leadership. The rhetorical and logical skills I amassed at the Academy continue still to inform my actions, and they will increase your confidence in yours.

You will be made to feel shame for what you did to Lionel’s house upon your return.

It is convenient, however, to get you out of the country, to avoid assassination. You see, with the lack of a body, it’s suspected Quincy didn’t commit suicide, but was killed by

About what she expected. Unfortunate that Anisa, too, was being eaten by paranoia.

She knew he had killed himself because he had told her, verbatim, that he was going to do so. He had given her a letter (as he was wont to do). Being a Day is too restrictive. Penbarrow is empty and worthless. It would be better that the crown prince be someone different.

She had run to the hill and missed him. She had considered jumping off herself.

And everyone seemed to accept it. But now there were baseless whisperings about assassins…

Maybe that made her feel better? Maybe her friends (not that Anisa was a friend) were just stupid, and not also malicious. Trying to protect her from an assassin who didn’t exist. One would think they’d send more than just Roe, then.

…Oh, maybe they sent a wagon of guards ahead and behind them.

She twiddled the knife from the bag and idly poked herself with it. Blood.

Shiron’s blood, she needs to get out of her head. She found a bandage and wrapped her hand.

“Yes, it’s possible!” said Vincent, “though there have only been 3 cases of it, and in 2 of those, they instantly went on to teach.”

“And case 3?”

“Don’t worry about that one.”

She closed her eyes. “What do you know about rope spells?”

“What?”

“Rope spells. Spells to manipulate rope. I was tied up on the way here, I don’t want that to happen again.”

Vincent smiled. “Maybe this should wait for after the tests?”

“Nope.”

“Ah… okay…” he, too, closed his eyes. “Are you wanting to target a specific composition of material, or the general class of items which tie you up?”

“The latter.”

“I don’t know about ‘rope spells’ in particular, but there are a few different schools of thought with this sort of thing. If you knew the particular material, the easiest thing would be to target its phlogiston specifically. Are there particular knots you’d want to target?”

“All knots.”

“Uh, okay. You’d probably want a more animist approach then, to grant the rope some sapience to untie itself. You’d need to learn how to undo all the knots, though, and give that knowledge to the rope, and doing so will be really exhausting, and if the knot gets hurt, you’ll get hurt too. If you knew the exact amount and location of force you’d need to impart, though, then you’d—”

“Why can’t I just turn my body into knives?”

“Pardon?”

“Or just, phase Four-Dee and move forward.”

“4D travel is inconsistent, so—”

“Or make the space inside the rope bigger than the space outside, and fall out of them.”

“Those aren’t really ‘rope spells’, those are more general purpose.”

“Alright then.” Sitting on the bed, she leaned forward. “Take all the general purpose spells you know, weigh them by versatility and speed of learning, and give me a list to start learning.”

His eyes gleamed. He laughed, smiled, bowed, and walked away.

“Have you ever cast a spell before?” he handed her a wand.

“Not directly, no. I’ve seen people do it, and I may have helped channel energy into runes, but I haven’t used a wand.”

“Oh, channelling is the simplest spell!” He crossed off a line on the slate he held. “Casting spells is just turning magical energy into some other form of energy.”

“Or turning yourself into knives, or bringing a rope to life.”

“All different forms of energy.”

“No it isn’t. Energy has a precise definition, it’s force across a distance. How does that translate into turning yourself into knives?”

“…Uh. Well. Huh. Did you read the books you were delivering?”

“A bit.”

“Well, you’re right, magic is a bit more complicated than that. And energy is a bit more complicated than force-distance. A lot of it is visualization.”

“No, I know someone who doesn’t see any images in her head, but does gravitational manipulation purely geometrically. 12 noltons, 45 degrees downward.”

“I’m not a magic expert, but the way I had it described to me, you’re speaking some language to the universe, and as long as it understands you, you’re probably okay. And wands help cut down on the noise.”

“So, the ‘universe’ has some sense of ‘being’, then.”

“Well… yes. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.”

“But there’s a difference between me throwing a rock and me willing a rock to be thrown.”

“Well, one is more direct, and energy efficient.”

“No, more than that. We learn we can throw a rock, because we see a rock,” she picked up her knife, “we feel an arm,” she bent her arm, “and we impart force over a distance.” She halfheartedly lobbed it at the floor. Vincent cowered. It landed on its hilt and skittered to a stop. “But, say, there was a blind man, he’d learn to identify a rock by its feel. Or, maybe someone loses one of their arms and has to learn how to throw with their sinister hand. Would the universe consider all of these to be ‘throwing’?”

“Probably?”

“So there’s a god god, then, and they’re who decides what counts as a throw, and decides whether someone is correctly doing a throw spell.”

“Uh… well, not necessarily. There are some who believe each spell primitive is based on the effects of each action. If one throws a rock with a left or right hand, even if you’re blind, it still results in a rock flying through the air and hitting something. Because each of these actions had the same result, they’re grouped together as a ‘spell’ which can be discovered.”

“Do more physical instances of an action cause a spell cast in that way to be easier to do? If I were to repeatedly throw something over my shoulder, would casting the throw spell in an over the shoulder manner become easier?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works. Most people who study magic just grab a book, a wand, and start visualizing and waving. And if it works for them, it works, and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”

And the list went:

V.W. 04/12/06 (Int. Thaum.)

Diagnostic/Utility (10 – 3 thaums)

• Clang – Will make the onomatopoeia ‘clang’ play in your head. Used to determine that indeed, your magic is working. Do not think ‘clang’ while casting it or you may get a false positive.
• Ratio – Get what percentage of your total storage you still have. Will manifest as a colour in your head, purple is most full, then blue, green, yellow, orange, red.
• Quantity – Get actual quantity of thaums you have at your disposal. Will also manifest as a colour, but is unbounded, and logarithmic. Red is empty, orange is around 10, yellow around 100, etc. Many experienced mages exceed the scale, instead seeing nothing, so will need modifications to cast it either on portions of the reserve, or visualize in another form. Often cast alongside Ratio.

Primitives (Merl-interpretation) (1 thaum(s))

• Channel (P₀₋₀) – Send magic outside your body. Thaums vary with precision, speed of channel.
• Conflux (P₀₋₁) – Receive magic. Arguably not a primitive.
• Bang (P₁) – Make a bang sound, like hitting a drum.
  • Formerly called ‘Clank’, and made the same sound as ‘Clang’. To avoid confusion with the Clang spell, it was changed.
  • Nicolai the Wizard was known to repeatedly employ ‘Clank’ to overwhelm the enemy and prevent them from knowing if their ‘Clang’ was working correctly.
• Heat (P₂₋₁) – Raise temperature.
  • Generally does not start a fire on its own.
  • Does not cool. Cooling can be achieved via a combination of Conflux/Channel/Heat.
• Light (P₅) – Shine a light.
• Yes-No (P₆₋₃) – Randomly say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in your head.
  • Research has yet to conclude if the result is truly random.
  • Do not think ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ when you cast it.
  • Aynaega (P₆₋₁) – Randomly say /aɪ/ (aye) or /eɪ/ (short for nay). Slightly cheaper.
• Speck (P₇) – Create a speck.
• Move (P₉) – Impart motion.
• Rotate (P₁₀) – Rotate.

“I notice there’s a lot of missing numbers between the primitives,” said Samantha. “You go P₂₋₁ to P₅.”†

“Yeah. Those are ones that are a lot more expensive, and not really beginner friendly.”

“Such as…?”

“Uh, P₃₋₁ would be stretching space. P₄ is lightning… P₈₋₁ and P₈₋₂ are time dilation… P₁₁ is an animism bridge… P₁₂ is conditional…”

“Conditional? What’s a conditional?”

“A different sound will play in your head based on something in the world. P₁₂₋₃.₈ says ‘Yes’ in your head if your eyes are closed, ‘No’ otherwise.”

The phrase ‘prophecy machine’ came to mind. “…Huh…”

“It goes up to 22 in the Merl interpretation. We get golems using P₁₂₋₇, P₁₄₋₂, and P₁₉. That is, Condition Zero, Loop Do, and Chain. Though, again, it’s super expensive.”

Blink. Blink. Blink.

“Uh.”

Blink.

“Samantha?”

Blink. Blink.

“I have a class to teach in 20 minutes, I’ll leave you to your thinking.”

“Vincent.”

“Yes?”

“Granted, this is expensive. Maybe it takes years of study to get good at, maybe it uses so many thaums it can’t be done very often before recharging. Maybe few people have interest. Maybe few people are actually literate enough to understand this, maybe they don’t have the ability to think abstractly about this.” She paused. That was Quincy talking. His conclusion would’ve been, ‘but, it’s doable, so it would’ve been done.’

“Okay?” Smile.

“I’m from Penbarrow. They excavate stone by hand and chop trees by hand. They grow wheat and corn and harvest by hand. And they bring these to Felkner, by horse, and sell it, and then head back and do it again. And people build buildings by hand and enforce the law by hand and collect taxes by hand.”

“Oh. Why aren’t they using golems?”

Blink. Blink. “You go to your lecture.”

“Okay!”

She sat in silence for a few minutes, glanced to her remaining letter(s), and decided to follow him.

† “/ju ɡoʊ pi tu wʌn tu pi faɪv/”.

“…previous lecture, a topological space T is ‘Hauwitzer’ if each distinct point has a disjoint neighbourhood around it. If you can pick 2 distinct points, but can’t give them nonoverlapping neighbourhoods, they’re not. A few examples: the trivial topology is vacuously Hauwitzer; the real number line, with standard topology, is Hauwitzer, as is N, Q, products thereof…”

Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. Abstract nonsense. These academics, playing with their letter numbers and number letters, having the means to make things better but wasting their time. And they wanted to waste her time with this.

“Saw you watching. You have intense eyes,” said Vincent, upon completion.

“Yeah. They’re my mother’s.”

“What’d you think?”

“What’s a set?”

“Uh… a mathematical primitive. An object such that one can ask if another set is contained in it.”

“Oh, that explains everything, then. I didn’t understand anything, but with that, it all slots into place.”

“I’m glad. I try to be clear.” Pause. “Sarcasm. You are a very weird princess.”

“I’m the daughter of a king. You shouldn’t have any expectations from that.”

“But I do! That’s what being the daughter of a king means! You learn how to rule, and curtsy, and direct troops, and tell the people to build buildings!”

“I can curtsy.”

“Can I see?”

“No. And no, that’s not what being the daughter of a king means. It means they assign you an empty sliver of land to manage, inconsistently send you a stipend, and gradually forget your existence. I agree that being a princess should be more than that. That’s another thing, actually, do you have an explanation why we haven’t been invaded when we don’t have a standing army?”

“We?”

“…Yes. Brune.”

“Is Northpoint Brune?”

“Oh my god… forget it, forget it.”

Blink.

“I can flip 4D,” said Vincent, as if that made up for his not knowing basic geography (yes, Northpoint was Brune).

“Oh, cool, one of my brothers can do that, too.” Well, if he stepped into the hyperspace chest he had. And if he wasn’t dead.

“Is he a topologist?”

“No.”

Did he mean topography? Was that what the whole lecture was about? At a stretch, maybe, Quincy was a topographist. ‘Topology’ and ‘topography’ felt like another ‘psychology’ and ‘psychomancy’.

The conversation had petered out and neither of them particularly wanted to be the one to start it back up so they left.

fortepiano_keys

Samantha

She had scheduled a meeting with Dean Callister through Vincent. Surprisingly, he had had a gap in his schedule 46 minutes after she had arrived, and so Vincent run back to inform her.

After some directionless stumbling, she swallowed her pride, retraced what steps of hers she could find, and had Vincent lead her.

Vincent retreated, and she entered to music. It was an odd sort of music, as if one were lightly strumming a guitar, but instead of letting the notes go back and forth, they were strapped down, but still they rang. A drum with the sound of a blocked trumpet.

He was sat at a table, but the table was open on one side, and it had teeth, and he was pressing the teeth, black teeth and white teeth, and different sounds seemed to correspond to the different teeth, phlegmatic molars and melancholic canines. …That was Agarma, speaking.

She stood. She wasn’t normally one for music. She’d listen to Joan play harp while she read; she’d listen to Quincy spit into his horn when he tried impressing townsfolk. Neither was particularly evocative; neither were particularly good.

She suspected these were the hands of someone good at this instrument. Anisa would say she had a lack of data. Though, with his deftness, his deliberate pressure, the transitions between louds and softs, perhaps he’d pierce even her noncommitality.

He stopped. He closed the table’s mouth, his long, thin, black hair blowing up as he did so. “You’re early,” he said, without turning around.

Samantha looked at the 4 clocks on the wall, 10:46, and blinked. She was late. “Uh.”

“Earlier than I expected, I meant to say.” He turned around. Wireframe glasses. A sharp, young face. Wasn’t he supposed to be around 50? “Busy halls and all, and your first week. Expected you to misestimate the time it’d take to arrive.”

“Happy to disappoint,” she said. “In a good way,” she unnecessarily added.

The colour of the keys was backwards. The black ones sounded more sad, and the white sounded more reserved. “The colour of the keys is backwards,” she said, unnecessarily.

“Your brother said the same thing,” Ha. “My people didn’t have the colour associations you do.”

She doubted that. “That makes sense,” said Samantha, unnecessarily. “Anyways I was here because I want to leave and this whole situation is stupid,” she said, necessarily.

“I know,” said Callister. “Has Vincent already given you the, ‘you’re here now, so you may as well take advantage of it’?”

“No. Kind of.”

“I’ll spare you that, then, because doubtless it’s coming. I’ve heard about you, Samantha. Your experiments, your industriousness. How you tried redirecting magic into crops using mirrors to make them grow quicker. How you learned to interpret laws to better manage your Vanguardists.”

She was flattered, and a bit vindicated, both on behalf of the title of ‘princess’ she so valued — princesses should have notoriety — and on behalf of herself, getting some recognition. Blind Quincy. Stupid blind Quincy.

“Yeah,” she said. “Gotta show up the dad.”

He smacked his lips. “Uncouth to put down your father, girl,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

He waited 2 seconds, long enough for her to feel shame at acting unprincessly, but not long enough for her mouth to speak again. “But regardless, your sister and brother got their start here, and your father did not. Your sister rules a city, your brother effectively rules an academy. Though you may discover new insights through stumbling about, thousands of others have stumbled about in the same way that you have, and have never gotten anywhere. It’s better to rely on random chance when you’re where no one’s been. You’ll be surrounded by people who think similarly. They may not respect you, but they’ll respect the title of princess, which you are very much capable of growing into. We have a lot of tasty food up here. You’ll see a lot of magic you wouldn’t otherwise. You’ll learn how to be independent and take revenge, if that so entices you. I have several more reasons, but I don’t have the time to list everything. I gave Hector a written list, which he should give Vincent, who should give it to you. Do you have any questions?”

No. “What’s that instrument called?” Dammit. Oh, also, she had more than one brother and sister, so h

“Sonorium,” he said, and blink, blinked. Was he mocking her blinking? “I believe the closest equivalent you’d know of is the fortepiano.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s new. Thank you for your time. Leave.” He opened the table’s mouth and pressed more shy sads and sad shies.

“Okay,” said Samantha, and she left, anything previously in her head having fallen out, as Callister had somehow hollowed it and filled it with his own complete structure, but which had yet to latch onto anything pre-existing. Like placing a sapling in a hole before its roots can grow.

But, Shiron, despite her stupor, she didn’t like being told what to do, even if it was perfectly reasonable and benevolent.

centigrade

Samantha

Having expressed interest in the spell primitives, Vincent took Samantha to a small museum.

“I remembered you asking about how the universe groups certain actions together as spells. This is one way it can be done.” He gestured to a display. Centigrade, the magical compiler. “It’s believed to come from Holstram himself. Magister Gordian determined a grammar that could be carved into tablets and given to golems, which is able to do many kinds of magic. Though, to be clear, I’m not a magic specialist. I’m a mathematician.”

She stared. She stared. She fell to her knees.

The room was so big, even though it wasn’t. It should’ve been. It was claustrophobic. The world was so small. She was suffocating. It was like a reverse stipospace backpack, a bag smaller on the inside than the outside, where the exhibit was stealing the very fabric of space from her lungs. She breathed in, out, in, out.

“Princess? Are you alright?”

“Fine, fine, yes,” she panted.

The building was tiny. Wooden roof only a foot higher than she was. Small display cases of books, ink, fragments of stone. And this. This, shoved off to the side.

“Well, if you want to learn more, you should read Gordian’s old notes. No one’s really worked on it since him, and that would’ve been before I was born. Well, besides the prince, I think.”

She attempted to stand to her feet, but gave up very quickly.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes. Yes.” Yes. “Vincent?”

“Yes?”

“I think we should get to know each other better. I propose we create 2 lists: 1, items we would absolutely wish to take with us should we go on a vacation, and 2, books which one found indispensable for their education. As many as you can think of for each. I shall do the same.”

“Perhaps after the tests?”

She breathed in. “Fine.”

son

Samantha

Apparently, some fugitive had resurfaced who was of interest to the dean, so he and several others left the academy to pursue. Convenient timing.

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.”

fool

Samantha

“We should talk,” said Samantha. “Like, really talk.”

“I’m going to piss in your princess bag.”

“Is it light enough down there? Can you see anything?”

“No.”

“The antigravity crystal should be emitting some light, should be enough to light the lantern.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

“It’s probably covered in clothes. Try moving the clothes around.”

“I vomited, too, it’s all over the clothes.”

“Why’d you do that?”

No response.

“Okay, yeah, this isn’t sustainable. Hang on to something. Woah, horse.” She hopped off and tied the horse around a shrub. She took the bag off her back. She increased her bellows’ squeeze speed. “Do you know tarot?”

“What? No.”

“Okay, well, it’s got all these different cards — the ‘major arcana’ — that represent different aspects of reality. The magician, the stars, death, that sort of stuff. The first one — zero — is The Fool. You are a fool, Vincent.”

Blink.

“Are you alive in there?”

“Yes.”

“Being a fool isn’t a bad thing. The fool goes on a journey and becomes more than a fool. I think that’s a recent development, the journey bit, but it’s true. The fool is potential, unrealized. Innocence. Harmlessness. You following me?”

“Unwillingly.”

“Good enough. See, you have all this potential, Vincent. You’re a magician, you have the will and the ability. You’re a hierophant, with the respect for the institution. You’re the star, with the faith you have in princesses. But it’s all chained up in the middle of nowhere. It’s all potential.”

“So that gives you the right to kidnap me? So my ‘potential’ can be ‘realized’?”

“Oh, no, what gives me the right to do that is because I’m a princess. Wait, no, you’re right, yeah. Er, no, wait, I have a right to call myself a princess because I’m realizing potential. Or, rather, that’s how it should be. I’m a fool too, Vincent.”

“Yup.”

“But that changes now, because I have the means to make things better.”

“And those means are?”

“You! And your books! And your magic compiler!”

“All covered in vomit.”

“You and your brilliant, stupid mind. We’re going to make thousands of spells, Vincent, and thousands of golems! And we’ll send them all across the country, and they’ll make everything easier! And we’ll be heroes! We’ll meet up with artificer-prince Hendrik in Dianthus, and the mage Verris in Felkner, and they’ll help! We’ll teach the engineer’s guild, and go to Blisbane for the miners! I see the path in my mind, Vincent, it’s beautiful!”

“Felkner? You expect me to survive in here for 5 days?”

“6. And, uh, no.” She did, initially, but this was obviously intractable, and she could only speak over his guilt-inducing words for so long. Exactly as planned, of course. “No, I thought, you wouldn’t leave Northpoint on your own, but once you were pulled away for a bit, you’d be convinced to come along of your own free will.”

“I see.”

“Do you see the vision?”

“I see it.”

“Do you want to come and make people’s lives better?”

“Samantha…”

“Yes?”

“Does there exist someone with your passion and vision, who isn’t completely insane?”

Her smile melted. “Yes. And honestly, getting her on board is the first step.”

“Getting me on board is the first step.”

“Zeroth. Fool.”

“You’re just making things up as you go to protect your ego.”

“No I’m not! Yes, I’m making things up, that’s true, but someone has to, and no one else does! Everyone is content to just have the world as it is! They don’t care that they spend all day picking up wheat, or that they’re illiterate, or that their house doesn’t have a clock! They’re all blind! They don’t know how things could be! Imagine being born blind, and not knowing what a sunset is. Or being born without a tongue, and not knowing that you could share stories! These people, these static, impotent peasants, they need their souls wrenched out of their skeletons to be bathed in enlightenment. God. And think me crazy, fine, and think me stupid, and think me, I don’t know, evil, or amoral, or broken, or a failure of a princess, fine. But I’m trying. Or maybe I just tell myself that. If everyone else tried, too, then criticize me, call me a failure. But they don’t.

“Real plan: we go to my sister, Anisa. She is sane, she is stable, she should recognize this potential. And then we all work together for something better. Please.” Tears came at some point.

No response.

“Vincent?”

No response. Distant hooves.

“Oh god damn it.” And she failed to untie the horse and failed to untie the horse and turned the bag upside down to pour everything out, and she held her hands up to be arrested.

bored

Samantha

The bed was stale. As was the air.

There were no windows. There was a single torch. Occasionally, it went out, and she was in complete darkness.

It was a holding cell. There were three more like it in the room, but she was the only one there. Every few hours, she’d be brought some oats, and some water, and her waste bin would be emptied and cleaned, and the torch may be relit. She worried about ventilation. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

She was also menstruating, which was annoying and painful. If she’d just left before taking the tests she didn’t care about, she could’ve been arrested without half-sitting on the bench, grabbing at nothing on the wall to steady herself and pissing blood. But then Vincent wouldn’t’ve written the list of things she should grab with him…

It wasn’t stupid. It was smart, and considerate. She wasn’t stupid.

She had been given her grades. She’d done fine. Not good enough to justify immediate graduation. Though, given the circumstances, it was moot.

They had given her no books. They had taken her clothes, she wore grey rags. There was a bed, and a waste bucket, and bars. 34 bars on her cell. It was in a corner, so there were 2 walls of bars, 2 walls of bricks.

Agarma would release her, it’d be fine.

printing_press

Samantha

“Samantha,” said Agarma, entering the room.

“Hey Garmie. It’s been a while. Glad to see you. Learn any new words? Sorry about the mess. If I need to pay anything back, I have the pennies, though they’re probably back in Lionel’s safe. Who’s that woman with you? I’ve seen her walking around the halls quite often. Before I was arrested, I mean. Is she your maid? Does she have a metal arm? Anyways. Ha. I don’t know, ever since Quincy jumped off that cliff and killed himself I guess I’ve been rather demented. Not that I wasn’t demented before. I mean, I’m not demented, rather, I’m opinionated, and I can be wrong. But I’m human! Yeah. Learn any new words? Did I already ask that? I already asked that. Fuck, hey have you killed dad yet?”

“Samantha,” he repeated.

“Yes,” said Samantha.

“Samantha,” he said. “A decade ago, I used Centigrade to automate the printing press, and traded it for the life of my retainer.”

Blink. “We’re… not so different,” said Samantha. “I wanted to bring Centigrade to Felkner, to get more use from it.”

“It took 2 months of development for the spell,” he said. “Half of that was just learning its interface. That spell is why I’m at Northpoint today. Do you know how a printing press works, Samantha?”

“Uh. You make a metal stamp, cover it with ink, align it over paper, and press it down?”

“Close. The stamp doesn’t have the letters on it. You use the stamp to press the paper down on the letters. My initial improvement was the ability to draw a template on a regular piece of paper, and have that read in to select and arrange the letters. Writing this way tends to be quicker than manually arranging the letters, and it allows you to easily pull out a template you’ve already created, if you find you need more of a particular page. It requires some setup, you need to have your characters pre-organized. My second improvement was to have the letters sort themselves, putting themselves back in preparation for the next page. My third and fourth were to have them apply ink to themselves, and to clean themselves afterward. After that, it became a collaborative effort. The primary issue with this was it was all sequential; every letter had to wait for the previous before it could position itself. Gordian wrote the algorithm to allow them to work in parallel, and I implemented it. There’s work underway to take pre-existing pages and convert them to templates, and to dictate to a page and have a template be written, but thus far, those have proven far more difficult problems.”

“How many characters do you generally use? 26, times 2, plus 10, plus, what, another 20 or so?”

“More or less. We have a total of 696 different stamps, but many of these are quite particular. Musical notation, for instance. Linguistics, too. And math. I review proposals for additional characters every 2 months.”

“I’m sorry for stealing Centigrade. I didn’t realize it was that important. I was under the impression its potential was being wasted.”

“Yes, Vincent seemed to think that too, which is troubling. But no matter, it is a sturdy piece of metal.”

“Oh. Okay, good.”

“Samantha,” he again said. She couldn’t blame him, her name was fun to say. “You are an unpredictable nuisance.”

“I’m more than that,” she said. Draining. “And, being unpredictable isn’t bad.”

“For me it is, Samantha, for me it is.”

“Well, why don’t we work together, then? You can work out who has access to Centigrade and when, I can work out who could benefit from using it. Keep things predictable.”

He stared at her in silence. Considering? Considering? He walked out.

bars

Samantha

She forgot how many times she had counted 35 bars (she had mistakenly counted 34 several times earlier).

“Bup… bup… bup…”

She’d asked the people who had delivered the food what happens next, they hadn’t responded.

Vincent entered.

“I’m sorry.” she said.

He held a bottle and two cups.

“I acted rashly, and it caused pain, and it wasn’t justified. So, sorry.”

He poured into both cups. “I don’t care, Samantha.”

“Oh. Is the stablehand alright?”

“His name is Bernard, and he’s fine, if a bit banged up.”

“And Centigrade?”

“Fine, it’s back on display.”

Vincent drank from his cup.

“So, now what,” said Samantha, “do I just apologize to your dad, or…”

“They’re going to execute you.”

“What? Why?” She shot up.

“I don’t know.”

“That literally doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t cause any lasting harm, right?”

“…I wouldn’t be so definitive.”

“Nothing that would justify execution, though?”

“No.”

“You understand, I ran a Vanguard Guild, right? They won’t stand for this. Anisa wouldn’t stand for this. Hendrik wouldn’t. I… if you combine all the manpower in the country who wouldn’t stand for this, you’d have a force who’d be capable of destroying anything.”

“I don’t know, Samantha.”

Blink.

“So now what?” said Samantha.

Vincent slid the cup through the bars. “I told you a lot of stuff, about magic. Why don’t you tell me how that bag works?”

“Really? That’s the most important information you can extract out of a doomed princess?”

“Yes. I’d think it only fair.”

“…Well, it’s a stipospace backpack with an antigravity crystal in it. The crystal probably came from Anisa, she’s the antigravity specialist, and the backpack itself came from Hendrik. It compresses space, so it’s bigger on the inside than the outside. The crystal reduces weight, because what’s the point in being able to hold more if it’s still just as heavy.”

“How is the space reduced inside of it? Can it be flattened out with stuff inside?”

“I think so, but I think there’s a minimum. If you put a book in there, from the outside, you could get the bag thinner than the book was.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sure I can drink this. My stomach is quite empty.”

“Try. And don’t do anything stupid until I come back.” And he picked back up his cup, and the bottle, and walked for the door.

“What, that’s it?”

And he left.

magician

Samantha

“You’re so stupid,” said Agarma. Samantha didn’t react. “You could’ve been well-positioned after Reimond died. You could’ve been an aspiration! An unruly princess who tempered herself in study, in service of creating new technologies to improve everyone’s lives.” He glanced to Claire, holding a paper. “Acknowledge?”

She fumbled with her sleeve. “Acknowledged. Time is, uh, 8:56, No, 8:57, sir. It incremented as I was speaking,”

Agarma closed his eyes. “Y’see, Samantha? Easy golem replacement. A lot of P₇ and P₁₂.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Claire.

“Don’t… we’ll talk after, Claire. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Samantha sat simply on the floor, leaning against the wall, legs out. “Are you really going to execute me?” she whimpered.

“Yes.”

Her heart fell into the abyss. She slumped. “Why?”

“Besides your unruly behaviour? Besides the awful example you set? Besides that your behaviour landed one of our best pupils in a cell?”

“What was that last one?”

“Say yes.”

“Yes what.”

“‘Yes, besides all that.’”

She slowly cast her gaze up. “Yes, besides all that.”

“For Anisa. She’s wanted an excuse to permanently get rid of you for a long time.”

Adrenaline swelled. “That’s not true. Ask her. We’re a team! I know, I may be impulsive, but I make people’s lives better! I do paperwork! I discuss bylaws! I run pancake breakfasts! I figure out what needs improving in Felkner, and I find people who can do it! And I just found a way that everything can be improved, and I was trying to bring someone who could do it back with me! You know that! Please, please, I’m useful, I’m trying.”

His assistant(?) side-eyed him. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I almost admire your impulsiveness. I love you too, Samantha.” He paced. “You’re cute, too. God, everyone is so cute.” He paused. “Your brain is worth at least 10 peasants.”

“More like 50,” muttered Samantha.

“Granted, 50. You don’t see farmers being so secure in their delusion that they’d kidnap and brainwash a teacher.”

“Dad was.”

He grit his teeth. “Granted, father was delusional. But he was more than that. He was kind. He would listen when his compatriots told him he had bad ideas. Samantha. Sa-man-tha. Do you know the word ‘co-operation’?”

Blink.

“…‘Co’, as in ‘together’, and ‘operari’, as in—”

“Yes, you have a dictionary in your head. Give it a rest. You thought the impropriety was worth it. Assault, robbery, kidnapping, all in service of a better world. Samantha, if, through those means, you get a world that’s ‘better’, it’ll still be worse than the one with ‘co-operation’. A world founded on force, on assertions that you’re better than everyone else, even if it’s true, is fragile. You don’t have anyone, Samantha. They all hate you. Because you’re awful.”

“Anisa doesn’t hate me. Woah, wait, this is rich, coming from—”

“Awful! She does! And so does your guild, who sent a letter—” his assistant handed him a piece of paper “—ahem, ‘request[ing] the execution be delayed until [their] arrival’.”

“Oh. Will you?”

“No. I might give them your heart, when they arrive. I’m keeping your head. And that stupid, cute, smile. Point is, they didn’t ask for it to be stopped, or claim I’m unreasonable. They want it just as much as I do, just as much as Anisa does.”

“You really should wait for them. I know, uh, they may offer you something in return if you let them watch.” Maybe someone would get her out of this still.

“I’d like to give you an offer. We execute someone in your place, and I keep you alive in my dungeon, forever. I’ve done the calculus, Samantha. The world can keep your wondrous (albeit redundant) ideas, but it can lose you.”

Blink.

“What does dad think?”

“Nothing. I can’t imagine the restraint Anisa needed to not rip father’s head off when he declared me heir, ha. If I were her, I would’ve killed him.”

“You keep talking about her as if you know her…”

“I intend to propose,” he said, ignoring her.

“Propose what.”

“To her. A partnership. Prior to your execution. The future of Brune is guaranteed, then. I can’t wait to hear of her tax policies.” His assistant glared and glared.

“Policies which I helped create.”

“And I thank you for your contributions.”

“I feel like you’re not listening to me.”

“Not really. You’re a net negative, and your voice is annoying.”

“So what was the point in seeing me, then. What was the point in any of this, if you just wanted to hear yourself talk. I know a good glassblower, if you need more mirrors to speak to. Too bad that information would die with me.”

“Shut up. Ah, yes. Just before this, I was reading Vincent Whiteclaw’s arrest testimony.”

“Why was he arrested?” Though she was annoyed, she continued to deflate.

“Took evidence without proper authorization. A certain stipospace backpack. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“…I mean, it’s my backpack, I don’t know why he’d do it.”

“Shame, we might have to execute him, too.”

“Don’t… don’t do that. He’s good. He’s smart. It’d be a waste.” Gray and passionless.

“Anyways, I saw you talking about being a fool, and him being a fool, and I thought, no you’re not. I thought I’d give you a tarot reading, myself.”

“Okay.”

“The deck, Claire.” And his assistant handed him a deck.

He drew a card. “Ah, inverted magician. How fitting.” He placed it on the floor in front of her.

“That’s not inverted, you idiot, that’s upright.”

“I’m the one doing the reading, so it’s from my perspective.”

“Your perspective is stupid and wrong.”

“Inverted magician represents restlessness and manipulation.”

“I know what it means,” said Samantha.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if I actually drew a fool? What are the odds of that?”

“With minor, modal and major, 1 in 86, minus 1,” said Samantha.

“Ah, close, it’s 1 in 85. 1 in 86 minus 1 is negative 85 out of 86. You should’ve stayed in school.”

Samantha had long since broken eye contact, eyes unfocussing. She didn’t bother moving her head or glaring.

He drew another. “Ah, wheel of fortune. Wheel of fortune…” he looked up, but Samantha was checked out. “You know, Penrose was a big proponent of Fortuna. He got executed, too.”

Blink.

“Ask me who Penrose is.”

“Nah.”

“Okay, inverted magician, wheel of fortune, and…” he drew a third card. He frowned. He frowned.

His assistant glanced over. “Oh, we must’ve shuffled a second deck in. Sorry about that.”

Samantha brought her eyes up. “What is it.”

“Invalid,” said Agarma. He crumpled it up and threw it back. He drew another. “There. Seven of Swords. That makes more sense.”

“Did you kill Quincy?”

Blink.

“Yes.”

headless

Samantha

I was headless. Bloody. The audience cheered. My sister smiled. My brother kicked my head across the stage. Bounce, bounce. And it was good. The guild was happy, too. A better world isn’t worth the bother of cooperating with the antisocial. In fact, it’s a better world by merit of my no longer being in it. There were multiple ways to get a better world. I’m fading, fading…

What a waste of a dream.

countermeasures

Samantha

John pulled Agarma out from the chest and threw him off the wagon.

A teapot fell up from the chest, narrowly missing Agarma, hitting the top canvas and falling back into the wagon.

Blink.

Blink.

“All I can think about is how we need to develop countermeasures for Four-Dee rotations,” said Samantha.

“Yeah,” said Anisa.

bread

Samantha

“You got any food?” asked Samantha.

They had bread, and she consumed voraciously. Big improvement.

Anisa was still out.

“Prithee, what is our state?” said Concord.

“Agarma didn’t follow procedure, so we took Samantha,” said John.

Concord looked back. Samantha was sitting, eating, tears streaming from her eyes, staring ahead. She looked to Anisa, who was sitting slumped to the side. “Anisa?”

“We’re engaged, now,” muttered Anisa.

“No you’re not,” said John. “She’s okay. Rattled from the guillotine.”

“I’ve seen guillotines before,” said Anisa.

“We’re going back to Felkner now, right Anisa?” said John.

Anisa was quiet.

“We’re going to Felkner,” said John.

“Straight to Felkner?” said Concord.

“Through Gelmton,” said John.

They sat in silence for a minute. “Doesn’t look like we’re being pursued,” said John. “Agarma is probably as shocked as you. He wouldn’t try arresting you, anyways.”

“Maybe,” said Anisa.

thanks

Samantha

“Thank you. For my life.” Samantha said to John.

“Me? Oh, no. I just brought the dead man. It was all him.”

“And he’s just in the chest? He’s not actually a ghost, right?”

“No, he’s alive, and yeah, he’s in the chest.”

“Well. Regardless. Ha. Ha! I hope you realize the gravity of what you’ve done. Of the future you’ve preserved for Brune. Ha! Ha!” She looked to the box. “I’m going to be very angry at him in a few hours.”

“He knows.”

vacation

Samantha

“Gelmton is in 20 minutes, are we going through?” said Concord.

“Samantha do you want to go on a vacation?” said Anisa.

“Yes,” said Samantha.

“Okay,” said Anisa. “How do we do that?”

“I don’t know,” said Samantha.

“Okay,” said Anisa.

John had gone in the chest and brought the teapot with him.

“I don’t get it,” said Samantha. “The hug. The rescue.”

“I didn’t rescue you,” said Anisa.

“You did. I’d be dead. Samantha No-head. Maybe my soul would evaporate. Maybe I’d be in hell. But now I’m not.”

“It happened under my nose. John is to be let go.”

“What!”

She grit her teeth. “He…” she exhaled. “He is to officially be let go.”

“He could join the Vanguard Guild again,” said Samantha.

“No, he— no, Samantha.”

“It’d be a cover.”

“No.”

“Okay. Where are the Vanguard, anyways? I’d expect more people to be coming to save me.”

“I don’t know.”

“I see,” (she didn’t). “What about the Blisbane Vanguard Guild?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hmm.”

She rubbed her hands. Binds had been undone. More knots, there. She still didn’t know how to untie them, with magic or otherwise.

“I don’t get it,” she repeated. “You sent me up here to get me away from you.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yeah, you did! And now I’m not going to school for the two years you thought I deserved. And you’re rescuing me from a brother who you thought wouldn’t try killing me.”

Blink.

“Did you read my letter?” asked Anisa.

“I read the first half. I spaced out after you started talking about an assassin.”

“That was the start! You… it wasn’t my call, Samantha, it was dad’s. Dad wanted to send you.”

“Oh. Huh.”

“Yeah. ‘Huh’.”

“But you did, too, you wanted me up there.”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t think that would happen. Let’s talk about it later.”

“Okay. I don’t hate you as much as Quincy but I still hate you a bit.” Hate was her baseline. Anisa knew that.

“Okay.”

drinking

Samantha

“You said you care about me. Why?”

“Don’t ask me to explain,” said Anisa. “Stop thinking. Spend an hour being happy you’re alive.”

“Yeah,” said Samantha. “Yeah.”

Blusters. She hadn’t paid mind to the terrain on the way up. Piles of snow. Some pine trees. A few trails snaked off from the main paths, probably sled dogs.

She had to thank their horses, who probably weren’t happy pulling them in this weather. Concord, for driving. Quincy and John. Whoever had approved Quincy getting the chest. Whoever had made the trail they were now on. Whatever force prevented monsters and bandits from showing up on this trail. Air. Whoever had made the bread she’d eaten. Time and space. Whatever Anisa had contributed.

A few of those bricks probably could’ve been removed, and she’d still be alive, but not many.

What the hell were they doing. Standing on so many bricks, and lamenting that they weren’t at the top.

Why weren’t they? Reimond was 66.

“Anisa, what’s the Brunian life expectancy?”

“Bourrienne would— Concord, where’s Bourrienne?”

“John said he was meeting us in Gelmton, that’s why I—”

“Yes, we’re stopping in Gelmton, then.”

“Acknowledged. Time is… I seem to have misplaced my watch.”

Someone had been maintaining the roads enough that, despite the snow that had been piling for weeks, there was still a clear path. Maybe the same people who had directed the conspiracy to not interact with her and Roe. Would Agarma be employing them? Possibly… a clear road was predictable, and useful.

“Anisa, what the hell are we doing?”

“Samantha, don’t make me regret this.”

“Why don’t we use golems?”

“Lack of resources, mostly. They’re very expensive.”

“That’s a stupid answer, when they can pay for themselves.”

“Maybe when this succession war is over, and we know what things look like years in the future, we can start considering it.”

“Huh. Yeah. Ah. That makes sense.”

It wasn’t over?

Of course it wasn’t. What, would she just—

“I should marry him.”

“No! No! Do you want to?”

Anisa was silent.

“Exactly!” said Samantha. “He wants me dead, you want me alive, that should be enough! That’s why a vacation is a great idea! Spend some time figuring out what you want!”

Yeah, it wasn’t over, of course. Ugh. They were probably being actively pursued. No wonder nothing got done, everyone worrying about the psychological game.

“We will need to write,” said Anisa. “Write to Agarma, and Calhoun. Formalize our position. Hendrik, too, he’s a loose end.”

“The position of ‘Samantha is better alive’?” pleaded Samantha.

“In part.”

“Write to the Felkner Vanguard as well, Agarma said they wanted him to wait for them to show up before executing me. Make sure they haven’t stabbed me in the back, assholes. Also, if you’re writing to Agarma, tell him to not kill Vincent Whiteclaw, or we do something.”

Logistics, logistics. Boring.

That’s probably all that being a king or queen is about, though. Slaying dragons is at most, what, 1% of that?

Ugh! She didn’t want to have to understand everyone!

Was this all some convoluted plan to make her gain perspective? Shove a semester of curriculum into 3 weeks! No, dad would be too stupid to do that, and it’d require everyone acting exactly as he’d anticipated, when everyone hated him and would react in ways he’d be unable to predict. And it’d require knowing Quincy was alive, and knowing whatever kind of magic he used to rescue her, and either having Agarma follow a script, or knowing that he wouldn’t plan for that kind of magic, and…

For the sake of stability, Reimond needed to be ousted immediately. Agarma can’t be allowed to be king, though…

Samantha laughed, so Anisa glanced over, worried. “We have Quincy,” said Samantha. “That asshole. That asshole! That asshole who saved me! Are we making him king?”

“‘Making him king’, Samantha?”

“It’s dad’s fault Samantha got sent to Northpoint, and dad didn’t interfere when Agarma wanted to kill her,” said Samantha. “So we need to oust him immediately, so no more Samanthas get sent to Northpoints. And we have the first crown prince, unless he just ran away again.” She looked to the box with no lid. She got up, leaned over it and shouted, “hey, are you in there?” She only saw a short ladder down to blackness. Fog leaked through.

“Yeah!” shouted John, “Yeah, we’re down here! Do, do you want a drink? He brought beer, we, we’ve got beer down here!”

“Kata, we’re kata here,” said Quincy.

“Quincy, are you going to be king?” shouted Samantha.

“No,” shouted Quincy.

“You’re a pathetic bastard,” shouted Samantha.

“We’re all bastards,” said Anisa.

“For one, we’re all bastards,” shouted Quincy, not hearing Anisa. “For another, I’m a pathetic bastard who saved you.”

“Granted, you’re a pathetic bastard who saved me, but think, if you’re not king, Agarma is, and then he kills me, so just, I don’t know, kill dad, say you’re king, and put Anisa in charge.”

There was a long silence.

“Does that work,” said Quincy.

“Yeah,” said John.

“We’re not killing father,” said Anisa.

“Shut up Anisa, we’re killing dad,” said Samantha. “If you want to plug your ears and play innocent, fine. Or we find some crime to accuse him of, if that makes you feel better. And then Quincy is king and he makes you empress, or something, and you put me in charge of, I don’t know, all the Vanguardists in the country, and then we work with the engineers to make golems and we automate farming and mining. There. Now we have a plan, and now I never have to worry about logistics again.”

“What if I make you — Samantha — queen, and then step down,” said Quincy.

Her eyes unfocused, unblinking. Putting aside that she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with the logistics; “Why didn’t you do that in the first place?”

There was a pause, then, meekly, he said, “Well, now we have Anisa onboard.”

“We do not,” said Anisa.

“Yes we do,” said Samantha. “If we don’t, she should start suggesting some better alternatives.”

“She needs a break,” said Anisa.

“…Right. Fair. Sorry.” Samantha climbed in the chest. “I’m flipping kata and getting drunk,” said Samantha.

“We’re arriving in,” Anisa looked to her watch, “10 minutes.”

“I’m flipping kata and getting drunk and you should too,” said Samantha, and she climbed down the ladder and flipped kata.

The ladder led through a thin film of water and snow down to another chest, with another wagon, except this one was smaller, and held a table and a few crates. Samantha was briefly disoriented by the gravity flip; but, managed to rotate herself around and climb up.

“What the hell is this?” she said. Quincy and John sat on crates, playing cards at the table, drinking from mugs. The wagon was tiny, and was completely exposed. It was a flat wooden square, with a piece of wood along each side so objects wouldn’t roll out.

“Oh, oh,” said John. “Something about physics, and a house being too heavy to drag around.”

“Antigravity?” said Samantha.

“The crystals have weight limits,” said Quincy. “If I’d attached anything more, the chest would’ve prevented the Midworld wagon from moving.”

“What’s this about antigravity?” said Anisa, peeking in.

“We’re all so drunk it feels like we’re weightless,” said Samantha.

“What she said,” said John.

“I couldn’t bring attach a house to the wagon because it was too heavy,” said Quincy.

“Is it safe down there?” said Anisa.

“Yes,” said Quincy.

“Concord, ensure the chest does not fall out,” said Anisa. As if the driver would do anything different.