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The Velvet Retreat’s carriage and driver spent the night in our carriage house, which has simple quarters attached for our driving staff, so the girls were able to go back right after breakfast. I sent a couple Pendor house knights as a mounted escort, since Serera and Dilorè had not returned.
I had no particular duties to pursue, and as far as the staff was concerned, I was still convalescent. I just had to wait around until Rod was ready to head to Pendor. But the fact that I didn’t have anything to prepare for didn’t matter to the Maid Brigade, and Terese wouldn’t hear of me just wearing ordinary clothing. But at least, I managed to restrict them to a more modest (at least relative to most of my dresses) black house dress, as that was what I requested. As Carson and Benedetta had spread the word about ‘Her Grace’ the previous day, nobody questioned my color choice.
Take a Victorian house dress. Replace the puffy sleeves with thin outline sleeves, or remove them entirely and make it sleeveless. Or start with an Edwardian house dress with thin sleeves and give it more volume in the skirt. Now give it a detached collar with an open bodice. That’s the Orestanian house dress in current fashion. The one I was wearing was the sleeveless kind. There are also those that have narrow outline sleeves like are sometimes seen on Edwardian house dresses.
Now make Mother the designer. She might be gone, but her presence still looms large in my wardrobe. As I inspected myself in the mirror while Terese settled on the accessories, I thought that my neckline was quite low. Not plunging past the solar plexus low, but the upper contours of the valley were bare down to where the slopes of the valley grow steep, and both Lucy’s stone and Mother’s amulet were out in the open.
It made me remember that I would have control of my wardrobe from now on. I hope I don’t disappoint the maids, but certain things will change. But, maybe not as much as I would have changed, a few months ago. I’ve adjusted, to a certain extent.
No, it wasn’t just ‘to a certain extent’, was it? During the night I had really let my fairy side take over for a while there, hadn’t I? I blushed a little, remembering my behavior.
Elianora also left after breakfast, so Mireia and I spent the morning in idle chat. I learned more about her experiences while serving Parna and what it had been like, traveling with Rod. I had guessed that she had seen action in the Tabad, but I didn’t know she’d seen quite a lot in the North. Nor did I know that the closure of the academy and the student departure had occurred in the midst of some actual military action on the part of the students and Provincial Guard members that had mutinied against Parna to join them. It turned out that some of the first actions of the civil war had involved the students of Copen.
After lunch, Genette and Garen returned from Langram, which I had fully expected, but to my surprise, so did Rod and the others. The Reladoran mages and fairies stayed in Langram, since Serera and Dilorè would be coming with us to Pendor, and Matthias, Ryuu and Chiara would also be coming along, as well as the four Royal Knights. Of course, Mireia would also be with us.
I counted. “So, twelve of us in total coming along?”
Genette immediately stated, “Fourteen, Young Mistress.”
I gave her a puzzled frown, but Garen supplied, “The miss and I will come along as well, Young Mistress.”
I wanted to protest, which was probably from habit. I would be going out as a fairy knight, at least for the length of the journey, and I didn’t need protection or a lady’s maid.
Terese joined their side before I could.
“Young Mistress, you are going to the territory in order to take charge. As a simple matter of etiquette, you cannot arrive without attendants.”
I happen to know Mother traveled by herself all the time, making hops between Atianus and Pendor whenever the situation called for it. But when she was officially in Atianus, she would make appearances in Pendor as ‘Deharè’, not ‘Sasara’, so that was different.
“I also need to go with you, Young Mistress,” Terese added, looking a bit fretful. “If you should recover Her Grace’s body, I need to attend to her final needs.”
“Very well,” I told her, and the list of people traveling to Pendor was complete.
“Will we go back by ship?” Genette wondered. “We can’t journey overland because of the war, right?”
“We’ll use the aircraft, of course,” Rod stated. “We’ll have to return through the Tabad to circle around rebel territory. How soon can we depart?”
“I’m ready to go immediately,” I stated.
“Young Mistress,” Terese intervened again, “We need to pack your things. And at least allow us time to have your tiara repaired.”
I had found it, and the Starfire Jade Writing Brush, during my outing the previous night. The brush was fine (actually, it was easy; I just called for it to return and it came flying to me, and I used its initial location as my start point for searching for the tiara) but the tiara had been damaged pretty badly.
Terese’s concern was that I would need it for official appearances, when I officially became duchess… or rather, if.
“Surely there’s a spare tiara in Mother’s palace in Narses?” I countered.
The maids looked distressed. Benedetta noted, “Public events will beget recordings and pictures. Society will notice eventually that you wore a different tiara, Young Mistress.”
I get that it is important, and a tiara should be custom-fashioned for the noblewoman who wears it, but was it really that important?
Matthias spoke up here. “Let me have a look at it, then. I’m fairly handy with accessories.”
We all turned to regard the sage. He pursed his lips, probably annoyed at our doubting expressions.
“Have you forgotten I’m a half-dwarf?” he demanded. “My mother’s family are goldsmiths!”
I ended up turning the twisted, darkened thing over to him. I also gave him the two emeralds knocked out by the blast. I spent an hour searching for them.
“You don’t have the diamonds that went here, here and here?” he immediately asked, spotting three more missing stones I had totally missed. And accurately identifying what should have been in the settings, I should add.
“I … didn’t even notice they were gone.” I admitted. “They would have been pretty small, so maybe they won’t matter?…”
Genette immediately cleared her throat and Terese stated, “I’m sure suitable gemstones can be found on the estate, Young Mistress.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “Mother bought me a lot of diamond jewelry. You can dig through that and find something to reuse.”
“Young Mistress,” Carson noted. “We keep many unset gemstones in the vault for capital reserves and material for special jeweler’s orders. There’s no need to ruin one of your mother’s precious gifts to obtain the material.”
I was going to say my jewels weren’t really gifts so much as the results of Mother’s weekly impulse shopping. Mother was the sort of person who might walk into a store and buy “everything from there to there”. But Rod spoke before I could say it.
“Can you have this finished before Morning, Your Wisdom?”
“Of course, Your Highness!” Matthias declared as if it were obvious.
Rod nodded. “We’ll need to take off as early as possible tomorrow, if we are to fly all the way to Relador in one go. That should take a solid twelve hours, so I would like us to take off within an hour after Morning.”
That phrasing might sound odd to American ears, but ‘Morning’, said that way, is a specific time, what we would call Six A.M. In other words, he wanted to take off before seven.
Carson stated, “Your Wisdom, please allow me to escort you to the vault. You may borrow our workshop as well.”
Ryuu, Garen and the royal knights– the three knight swordsmen at least– trained in the gym with Rod. Mireia took Chiara aside and I had the sense she wanted to learn more about the blood bond. Serera and Dilorè both disappeared to who knows where, the female knight mage found her way into our library and Genette and Terese busied themselves with packing for themselves and me.
Left to my own devices, I first took a long bath, then reviewed reports that had been waiting for Mother. I didn’t really think they had to get taken care of right away or anything. I was just familiarizing myself with what a regnant duchess has to deal with. It wasn’t decided yet whether or not I would be handling this work, but since I had the opportunity to study up, I figured it couldn’t hurt.
If I didn’t do it, I would be stuck with nothing to do, so yeah, I was killing time.
They might have been duplicates of reports that were sent to her in Narses, but I had no way to tell. After I spent a few hours reading through them, I decided to have the maids box them up to bring along, just in case.
Dinner was a slightly less formal affair than before, but still formal. The maid brigade insisted on upgrading my outfit to evening dress and took the opportunity to go for a slightly more revealing garment without pressing their luck too much. The prince (and son-in-law of the house) was visiting again, after all. But dinner was an awkward time for me, since Rod seemed to be absorbed in thought for most of the meal. He did speak to me for a little bit, though.
“We need to stay overnight in Relador,” he mentioned. “I was going to consult Lady Serera, but do you have any thoughts as to where we should stop, My Lady?”
I felt a twinge in my heart again as I heard My Lady instead of Ti.
I wiped my mouth with the napkin, then answered, “It would be best to choose Tëan Tír, Your Highness. I need to consult the royals of Faerie on an issue anyhow, and the security is unparalleled.”
“Does that issue involve your mother, by any chance?”
I hesitated. “In a certain way, it does. It’s something I need to speak to Your Highness about as well, but in private. Will you join me in Mother’s office after dinner?”
He looked reluctant, but he agreed.
When that meeting occurred, Terese and Genette brought us tea (why it was both of them doing it, I’m not certain) and then closed the door.
Rather than using Mother’s desk, we were seated across from each other at Mother’s breakfast table, to one side. Rod was scowling down at his tea cup with pursed lips.
“Your Highness, are we going to be able to work together in the future?” I asked.
He looked up at me in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“It seems quite difficult for us to even speak to each other right now.”
He looked away, then took a sip of tea. He pursed his lips again and considered the back of his hand. Then he stared at nothing at all, or perhaps a random spot on Mother’s carpet, for a few moments.
“It’s difficult for me,” he finally admitted. “You look, sound and act just like her. It’s too confusing for me. I’m not smart enough to deal with this.”
I let out a breath, then hung my head. “I can’t really help that. The process of bringing me into this world imprinted the original Tiana’s personality on me. I am emotionally and intellectually a recreation of her. I’ve recovered a lot of my own thoughts since then, but all her basic mannerisms overwrote mine. As this is her real body and voice, I am literally just like her, and there’s nothing I can do about that. Your Highness, don’t wait for something that can’t happen. I’ll make adjustments for you if I can, but I must be Tiana to do what I came to this world to do.”
“Why does it matter to you?” he asked. “This isn’t even your world, right?”
I blinked. What was that?! What kind of question was that?!
My voice was trembling slightly when I began my answer.
“Your Highness… If you do not see me as Tiana, then the only other choice for who I am is Senhion. To be precise, I am the Elder Senhion, Commander of the Third Celestial Legion of Huade. Fourteen thousand years ago, I descended from the Immortal Realms, the place you call Heaven, in order to serve the Tutelary Council of Huade, the beings you call gods, in order to protect and serve your ancestors, the human beings of Huade.”
I had been rattling on, getting a bit more annoyed with every word, as his question progressively bit further into my heart.
“As Senhion, I have an unknown number of descendants. I have no idea how many, but mathematically, it could be literally everyone you ever met. My son Oberon and my grandson Gelon both apparently had many fairling children in their early years, and those genes have been spreading through the mortal population for the ten thousand years since my son’s birth. So, if this isn’t my world, just how is it that everyone on it are my children, Your Highness?”
To my surprise, there were tears in my eyes. I was truly, honestly hurt.
Rod stared at me blankly, blindsided by my sudden outburst. But I didn’t regret my words, even one little bit.
