TO&FQ: Book 3: Chapter 12 (RAW)

Chapter 12 - New Equipment

As men get older, the toys get more expensive.

- Marvin Davis

Pushing herself, really pushing herself, had left the girl a drenched, sweat-soaked mess. Still, it was not without its rewards as Seraphina had gained an extra point in Strength and Constitution.

But what truly pleased her, what disturbed her too, was the birth of a new skill: Endure. In the game, Endure was vaguely described as the ability to mentally overcome privation and bolster one’s willpower in adverse situations. Mechanically, it increased the contribution of Constitution and Wisdom to saving throws against negative effects, and provided minor resistance to all forms of non-physical damage.

Despite its obvious utility, Endure was not a skill Seraphina was eager to train—considering, well, that one had to actually “endure” something to improve it. It simply was not a pleasant experience.

Right now, the young girl was enjoying the open hot spring baths, the one saving grace of this backward hamlet. Her magic relieved her body of the rigours of extreme exercise, but she just soaked in the invigorating hot water, enjoying the relative and rustic pleasure. The waters were also meant to do one wonders for the skin, but again, her Heal spell kept everything about her in peak condition.

It was in moments like these that she missed her lady-in-waiting, Eloise, most of all. Miriam simply could not be trusted with her naked person—the maid’s glances lingered too long when her lady undressed, and her hands were always just a touch too helpful. No, this was a task Seraphina handled herself now, wrapping a towel around her shoulders and wringing the water from her short blonde hair.

I should have learned Fire, she thought sourly. One call to Mana, and I’d be dry.

It also looked like she was the proud owner of a new cattle farm. She would set Miriam to it—let the girl hire more locals or, better yet, draw from her many facilities. The orphans she sheltered were hardier than most, grateful for a roof and steady bread, and less likely to complain or demand coin. War along Aranthia’s border with the Empire had swelled their number again; fresh shipments of sorrow to be molded into service to society at large.

Dressed now in her travel-wear, a split skirt of her own invention, autumn brown and suited to both saddle and seat, and a soft, pale smock with a touch of frill at the neck and cuffs, Seraphina studied herself in the cracked mirror by the bed. The tailored garment was loose across her chest by intent; using her mother’s figure as a reference, she felt that she needed some room to “grow.” The overall look was “casual” and slightly worn looking, but the actual cost would have shocked most who would have learned of it. The premeditated worn look was there to add a sense of impermanence to the ensemble. 

“Casual quality” would have been a better term, she mused. According to her sources, a growing number of the girls in Aranthia wore her skirts of the same cut, especially among the lower classes. The nobility, too, had, seeing her example, started to wear them. She had not intended to set a trend, but she could not deny the little bit of pleasure it brought her. There was power in that, too, wasn’t there?

The Fae, Tia, fluttered about in her garment of leaves, hopping across the coarse, almost sackcloth-like fabric of the bed’s pillow. Seraphina made a mental note to commission a dollmaker to prepare a proper wardrobe for her new servant. Even if no one else could see her, she couldn’t very well have Tia flitting about in that.

She tugged a bell-cord and waited for the bustle of preparation to begin. The road called to her once more. She had weighed the choice: stay another night in this backwater, or ride. And in the end, the choice had made itself. She had endured enough of this place.

***

The de Laney lands had, as expected, excellent roads, much to the delight of Seraphina’s rump. Like the roads of the Empire, they were broad, flat, and dry, with nary a pothole to jostle the carriage nor a stone out of place. Whatever else could be said about the de Laneys, they at least understood the importance of infrastructure.

The countryside beyond those well-laid roads, however, told a different story. It was a sparse and wind-scoured place, where the soil cracked underfoot and the fields looked like they would yield little but disappointment. Crops grew thin and pale as ghosts—twisted stalks of barley, blighted cabbages, and onions that seemed to shrink from the sun. No water wheels creaked in the distance, no workers labored with smiles from vineyard rows, and the grazing herds looked less than vibrant. It was a silent land, and almost a sick one.

The King had both blessed and cursed the de Laney’s with a domain like this. No doubt, Elidion had thought that the de Laney’s would pour their considerable wealth into “fixing” this part of the Kingdom.

Seraphina watched it all through the carriage window, her fingers idly tapping the armrest. Poor soil, she judged, lips pursed in quiet distaste. Or lack of enthusiasm for agrarian pursuits. Perhaps both. By comparison, her father’s domain had been a garden—lush, overfed, and spilling its wealth onto the roadsides like a merchant’s purse too heavy with coin.

The de Laneys, she thought, would have their work cut out for them if they were to make this place prosperous.

Then, on the horizon, came the first smudge of smoke—thin, purposeful columns rising against the afternoon sky. Shortly thereafter came the shape of walls. Low, still growing by the look of them, with scaffoldings of timber clinging like barnacles to half-finished towers. A gatehouse sat squat and stubborn between two stumpy bastions. Beyond it, the clustered rooftops of Bouchant, the de Laney barony’s main town, huddled beneath slate-gray clouds.

As the carriage crested a ridge, she saw it in full.

Bouchant was not a city by any lord’s reckoning, but it had pretensions of becoming one. The town straddled a shallow bend in the Lurette River, its stone bridge, although functional, still under repair. Rows of narrow houses pressed close together like cold men huddled for warmth, their eaves sharp and sloping, roofs tiled in alternating blue and black slate. Chimneys belched thin trails of smoke that stank faintly of peat. The market square, such as it was, looked little more than a muddy field with a few wooden stalls and canvas awnings flapping in the breeze.

The carriage rolled on past the gates, and the young girl could see that there was something stirring beneath the grime. A new quay was being constructed on the riverbank, where boats might one day unload timber, salt, or smoked fish. Warehouses, freshly mortared and lacking their upper levels, stood like proud stumps near the docks. A modest guildhall was under construction beside the chapel, and just beyond that, what looked to be a new inn promised comfort for the wealthier sort of merchant.

Seraphina saw the signs plainly enough: the de Laney family meant for Bouchant to become a hub of trade, a rival to the older market towns nestled closer to the border. Roads are well-paved for caravans. Bridges rebuilt with tolls in mind. A barony reshaped not by war, or the fruit of the soil, but commerce.

Ambitious, perhaps foolishly so, but at least it was an attempt at making it a better place.

The whole endeavour would take time, gold, and more than a little ruthlessness. But in Seraphina’s memories, there was the time when she had met Lady Yanmei de Laney once, and she did not doubt the Empire woman’s capacity for all three.

The young noblewoman leaned back in her seat, adjusting the fall of her split skirt and brushing a fleck of non-existent dust from her sleeve. “Well,” she murmured to no one in particular, “let’s see what passes for civilization here.”

The carriage rolled on through the streets of Bouchant.

“Civilization, Seraphina?” asked Tia curiously.

The Fae had been, despite repeated correction, unable to remember to call her by her proper title. It was quite enough to drive one wild.

***

On their way to the de Laneys’ riverside manse, the carriage rattled through Bouchant’s heart. Stalls leaned into the street like gossips with elbows out, hawkers howled over one another about onions and ironmongery, and somewhere a pig screamed as if being murdered—which it probably was. Amid the clamor, a splash of color caught Seraphina’s eye—a narrow-fronted shop with a painted signboard: a grinning jackanapes in motley, juggling wooden soldiers and a doll in a lace gown.

“Stop,” she shouted, opening the window. “Here.”

The carriage lurched to a halt. Sir Frest, ever the dutiful, swung down from his saddle and tugged the door wide. “My lady?” His visor was up, his brow creased. “What is the matter? Have you seen something?”

Seraphina smiled sweetly, nodding to the bright little storefront. “That toy shop and I mean to have a look.”

Frest blinked. “Toys and dolls, milady? At your age…” He coughed into his gauntlet. “I mean… I only thought such things were for younger children.”

“So are sugared candies,” she replied sweetly, “and I know full well you rather enjoy them despite your advanced age. They will ruin your smile, Sir Frest.”

That shut him up. He stepped back, abashed, and offered a hand she did not take. Seraphina hopped down herself, skirts gathered, her feet finding the cleanest path.

A bell tinkled as she pushed the door like a child’s laugh. The smell of sawdust, linseed oil, and hot glue wrapped around her at once. Shelves pressed close on every side: ranks of painted soldiers in bright tabards, clockwork beetles that clicked and whirred, puzzle boxes carved with tiny dragons, and dolls of every size and complexion, some with porcelain faces pale as moonmilk, others with wooden heads and painted smiles.

Behind a counter littered with shavings stood the toymaker. He was old, truly old, with a spine bent like a bow and a fringe of white hair clinging stubbornly to his spotted pate. A nest of goggles hung about his head on leather straps, each lens a different size. His apron bristled with tools: awls and gimlets, tweezers fine as needles, little saws with jeweler’s teeth.

He looked up sharply at the bell, eyes magnified grotesquely behind one lens. When he saw a girl in fine cloth, flanked in the doorway by an armored knight and a harried maid, his eyebrows immediately shot up.

He spoke in the thick, tonal cadence of the Empire, his consonants clipped, vowels rising and falling like a song. “Honored miss, forgive this humble artisan. How may I serve you?”

Seraphina answered him in his own tongue, the words rolling off her tongue with surprising grace. His mouth fell open. “You speak? Your accent is not the… I mean you speak very well for one not of the Provinces,” he managed with a laugh of delight. “Ha! A fancy lady with clever ears. This is a rare day.”

“I need parchment,” she said briskly, slipping back to Aranthian. “And a charcoal stick. Quickly, if you please.”

He scuttled to provide them. Seraphina spread the parchment on the counter, smoothed it flat, and began to sketch—quick, deft strokes, measuring with thumb and knuckle. A bodice no bigger than a palm, a skirt cut on the bias, sleeves puffed just so. “This,” she said, tapping the parchment, “is the size I require. Precisely. Not a hair broader.”

“For a doll?” the old man asked, peering. “Latest fashions, is it? As chance would have it, I was just assembling a new collection for the festival market. Lace, ribbons, little pearl buttons…” He chuckled, a dry, papery sound. “But this size… and holes at the back, that is curious.”

“My doll is… particular,” Seraphina said lightly. Invisible and winged, she did not add. “Do you have anything in the newest style? Empire waists are out—high collars are back in, and sleeves with slashes.”

“Ha! You’ve an eye.” He shuffled to a cabinet, tugged a drawer, and brought out tiny gowns on wire hangers, each no larger than a handspan. Silk in miniature, velvet with mouse-tail trims, brocade so thin it may as well have been painted. Seraphina sorted through them with a practiced touch, lifting, judging, discarding.

“These will do,” she decided at last, picking three. “But they must be altered to this exact measure.” Her knuckle rapped the drawing again. “Precisely.”

The toymaker pursed his lips. “This detailed work takes time, my lady.”

“I know full well that the efforts of the best take time, but alterations are easier to do than to create a dress from a fresh bolt of cloth, no?” Seraphina answered sweetly.

She turned to Miriam, who had been looking increasingly perplexed, and told her, “Milly, see to the payment. Have the doll garments delivered to the de Laney estate by the river. Make sure he is suitably compensated for his haste and skill.”

“Yes, milady,” Miriam said, already producing a purse.

While coin clinked and terms were haggled, Seraphina’s gaze wandered. A low shelf along the far wall held toys that were traditionally for boys: tin wagons, little castles, and a rack of tiny swords—real metal and swordsteel. Her fingers closed around one hilt. The weight and balance pleased her.

On a flash of inspired impulse, she called over her shoulder, “Master…?”

“Zhoun,” the toymaker supplied.

“Master Zhoun. Could you craft a set of arms and armor in miniature? A sword, a dagger, and a spear. Not just as toys. Proper weapons, made as you’d forge the real thing, only scaled down. They should be sharp. Razor sharp.”

The old man blinked, then laughed, then blinked again when she did not laugh with him. “Sharp, my lady? For children? That would be… ah… unsafe.”

“They are for my brother,” she lied with a straight face. “He collects curiosities, and his tastes run to the unconventional.”

“Foreigners have the strangest of tastes.” Master Zhoun scratched his ear. “Armor, you say? What style?”

“Plate where possible, with some mail. Do not skimp on the rivets,” she mused, “Articulated elbows, knee cops that actually pivot.. I expect it to function.” She smiled pleasantly. “Imagine you are making this for a tiny little winged warrior. Make adjustments… like this,” she explained, scrawling a rough design that would allow for Tia’s wings onto the parchment. “And etch the breast with a symbol of my House,” she continued, drawing the Wisterias of the de Sariens.

The toymaker whistled low. “A few days at least. Perhaps a week.”

“A few days is perfectly satisfactory,” she said. “Deliver them with the dresses.”

Miriam was finishing with the coins—arguing a few silvers off the order, of course, just for the principle of it. 

The noblewoman offered the old man a nod that was almost a bow. “You have been most helpful, Master Zhoun.”

“And you, most surprising, Lady…” He trailed off.

Seraphina smiled radiantly. “Seraphina.”

She swept out then, skirts whispering, the bell above the door chiming her exit. The street swallowed her at once: noise, stink, and color rushing in like tidewater. Sir Frest fell into step, face unreadable behind the bar of his visor. Miriam hustled behind, clutching a folded chit and a receipt, cheeks flushed from wrangling price against pride.

“Armor for dolls now, milady?” Frest ventured at last as he opened the door of the carriage for her.

She simply shrugged, climbing in and settling in her seat.

“For your brother who does not exist,” he reminded her.

She smirked as Frest closed the door. A few moments later, he banged on the frame and the carriage began to move. “Well, not yet, at least. Though my parents will see to correcting that,” the girl muttered to no one in particular.

Tia settled on her shoulder as the carriage rolled on, past the market square, toward the Lurette’s gray gleam. Ahead, through the bare limbs of poplars, Seraphina glimpsed the de Laney manse: a long, low house of pale stone and steep roofs, standing like a ship beached upon the riverbank. Smoke curled from its chimneys, and a banner, a grove of black alder trees on a green field snapped in the wind.

The young noblewoman was quite looking forward to reuniting with her lady-in-waiting.