Nasty Little Witchling

I was back in the same spot as the day before. Feet dangling over the edge and into the pond while I lay on the grass. When I arrived I made sure to say sorry to the fish who had thought my toes were food yesterday. I’d threatened them with very vivid images of how I could fillet and debone a fish. It was more for my own conscience since I didn't think they understood or cared much.

After chomping through my lunch I had laid back and fallen asleep until someone woke me up. They asked why I was sleeping on the ground and I think I might have replied that it was because there was no hammock. I hadn’t fully woken up yet.

The rest of the late afternoon had Yanla catching up to me with a signed letter that would let me take out books at the library. She didn’t know about the doll but from where she said it was I wouldn’t be able to go there without having it move with me.

I also received some thinly wrapped rolls of bronze and silver. The rest of the gold reward would be held for safekeeping. I thought about asking for all of it but chided myself for being ungrateful. I wouldn’t know what to spend that amount of roe on anyway.

Dinner was brought to me in my room where I ate atop the enchanted table. I took the plate back down after I finished and wandered around until I found the kitchen to wash it. The staff were not impressed since I apparently did it wrong and Yanla told me not to worry about it when I offered to come collect my meal from the kitchen next time.

She said I would have been eating with the duke but he was stuck in a family discussion that he ‘didn’t want to bother me with.’ I had gotten over the morning’s events by then but it still irked me that I now felt more at fault for the loss of the coin.

Yanla asked if she could use me to train some of the new hires instead of me helping with the plates. She prefaced the question with a long spiel about not meaning any offence and I was simply not the usual type of high profile guest they got. I nodded along, obviously, I wasn’t.

I’d found it easy enough to infuse the enchanted table and only had a scare about the flowers wilting away during my first few attempts. So, I didn’t mind helping out more.

Haily came up after that conversation and brought me toiletries and towels as well as nightwear. I didn’t know what half the bottles did but they smelt nice and I used whatever seemed appropriate when washing.

My spare set of clothes was also brought up with Haily pointing out a basket for laundry. I tried to ask where to do said laundry but her short brown hair flicked about as she shook her head and tried to talk me out of it. She only succeeded under the threat of getting Yanla to talk to me again.

I was starting to see a pattern of being treated far better than I deserved. There wasn’t much else they could want from me and this was a lot more than what Annalise had offered. My thoughts shifted from suspicion to gratitude and ended up being worn down to cautious optimism.

I’d made my way to the stables when I awoke with the sun. It had been difficult to remove the covers to a point where I could pull them over myself and more difficult to convince myself to get out of them in the morning.

Missy was still there and I brushed her down along with the other stable full of horses that wanted it. A farrier, Miles, came to work on Missy’s hooves and I stood by while she assured me it didn’t hurt and that they actually made it easier for her to walk. I even helped him with a particularly stubborn white and black splotched horse who shared the same white socks as Missy.

He had an aversion to being pulled around and having his legs lifted for his shoe replacement. Polem just needed a bit of encouragement and direction on where to move himself without being tugged at.

I wasn’t allowed to ride any of the horses since I needed the rider’s permission and not theirs. Miles laughed when I tried to argue that the horse's opinion was more important.

With nothing else to do and no plans to venture out into the battleground that was the city proper, I returned to the pond to lie about. I convinced a bright blue and black bird I hadn’t seen before to perch itself on my outstretched finger and whistle with me.

I was getting good at mimicking the different sounds when someone scared them back to the branches. I cracked an eye open to see which mage was responsible.

“Valeria?” Samuel asked. Sadly, it wasn’t Haily coming to ask me a simple question or offer lunch. My breakfast consisted of taunting horses by taking bites of their fruit before feeding it to them. Missy had put a stop to that before I got my fill by huffing into my face and trying to chew my hair.

“What?” I said with a little too much venom. I’d meant to say hello and ask what he was doing here but that had collapsed into rudeness.

“Okay…I’ll leave you be.”

“Wait, sorry,” I said with a sigh and sat up. “Hello, Samuel.”

“Just Sam is fine. You seem…angry? What happened?”

“I am not angry. How come you’re at the palace?”

He was dressed in a more form fitting and layered garment than he had been wearing on the train. He turned and pointed up to a window on the third floor. “I was training with the knights then came here to sit in on a meeting that my brother and dad are having with the duke when I saw you. What are you doing here?”

I shifted my legs so the water rippled across the pond and made the forms of the colourful fish blur. “I don’t have much to do so I was just sitting, thinking.”

“I meant at the palace.”

“Oh…I’m a guest, I think.”

“You think? Is some of this thinking you’re doing the reason why you’re scowling?”

I was absolutely not scowling before and the only reason I might have been was because of him. I didn’t feel like getting called a moron for holding my coin in the open, or for using spells in the city or for hitting a knight. But I already accepted that I was a moron and I’d listened to him talk about his interests, he could listen to me complain.

“I went out to the city yesterday to buy lunch since I was hungry and didn’t know how to get food here and assumed I wasn’t going to be joining the duke for meals and then someone stole my coin. I chased him. Did you know you can’t use spells in the city?”

He nodded slowly, I ignored that and continued. “Then some officers came to drag me back to the castle, they wanted to lock me up for trying to get my coin back and apparently can’t chase people in the street,”

“Not during the day, no.”

“Then one of the apprentices I had been travelling with grabbed me by the hair, accusing me of trying to make him look bad for something he did to me and I didn’t even say anything!”

The fish darted away as I kicked at the water again.

“Have you told the duke about all of that?” Sam asked slowly. “I’m sure he wouldn't appreciate that happening to one of his guests.”

I sighed, I didn’t care for solutions to a problem that no longer existed. “I’m not really a real guest, it doesn’t really matter much anymore.”

“It sounds like it does, that all seems rather horrible.”

“It felt like that at the time. You don’t have to get back to the meeting?”

“Nope, I only came since I was training nearby and on the off chance they’d be talking about military spending and the increase in ghoul escapes, not a new sewer system and the purchase agreements for the land it’s going to be built on.”

“What kind of training?” I asked, not wanting to get into a conversation about sewer systems even he wanted to avoid.

“Just strength and endurance, I can’t learn any of the more advanced spells till I start school. Which will hopefully be at Equitier.”

“Right, and also military strategy,” I said, remembering his talks on the subject. “Do you think training can help me? Just looking at areas like those stairs hurt my legs.”

I pointed over to the end of the palace where a staircase went up to the middle of the wall and then split off to follow the wall up to the top on each side. I also wanted to be able to run long enough to catch the next person who stole from me, as long as he stayed within my boundaries.

“I’m sure it could help, we can start with going up the stairs,” he said and motioned for me to take his outstretched hand.

I groaned and laid back down.

He reached for my hand and I had half a mind to send him into the pond. But he was being kind so I left it there for him to pick up and lightly shake the rest of my arm with. “The view will be worth it.”

I lifted my feet up and made the waterfall off before snatching my hand back to put on my boots.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end and I glanced up to the window Sam had pointed out. The curtain fell back in place as the heads that had been peeking around it retreated. The duke had the same kind of mana disguise as Annalise but unlike her I could still sense him from all the way down here.

Sam had already begun walking towards the steps and I followed after him. I could walk all day in the forest, under the shade of trees with flat ground. But by the fist landing where the stairs split I wanted to stop but he turned and walked up the rest without hesitating.

He talked about the strategy behind the only entrance to the top being at the back of the palace and the different tactics someone could use to defend or attack it.

It gave me some satisfaction to hear his voice strain as his breathing deepened and to watch his steps become heavier towards the end. I plopped down on the last step with a breeze cooling off the sweat pooling on my neck.

“Do you think a ladder would be easier?” I asked Sam who was leaning against the wall that dipped up and down each block.

“Not sure, it would be less safe and harder to get ballistas and other supplies up here, but easier to defend. Now come look at the lake already.”

I used my arms to push against my legs in order to stand up and trudged over to lean on another section where the wall dipped. “Huh.”

Sunlight glistened off a body of water that stretched out to the horizon. Gentle waves lapped at the sand and jagged rock below us. I knew sticks and logs could float but it was something else entirely to see wooden boats crawling with people floating across the lake.

“It’s not as large or clear as Lake Olai but it’s still pretty, I wouldn’t recommend swimming though, too many barracuda.”

“Mhmm,” I hummed while propping my head up on my palms. The view might have been worth the steps.

I sneezed as a transmission went off behind me. The tower with the receiver on it was almost at the same height as us and I seemed to be in the way now. It was some kind of request for confirmation on a meeting with a few teachers tomorrow afternoon. I sneezed again as another one went off with a lot of numbers to do with roe and banking.

It wasn’t as bad as when I was close up like with the one in Tamil but all the information arriving at once as a mess of thoughts and feelings was not good for my head.

“Are you cold?” Sam asked, peeking around the stone block between us. I shook my head as another went past that mentioned the grape fields.

“Let’s go see the city.”

I followed him across the walls and past a few knights who didn’t care we were up there. The square things that appeared every so often were called towers and we stood on the one nearest the edge. Sam was ecstatic that I didn’t know anything about castles and he pointed out each piece which all seemed to have their own very specific names.

We were directly overlooking the wall around the staff area with the lake on our left. Most of the gated area the Manafold carriage had gone into was covered by the primary wall but Sam managed to point out his house and those of the others who were also in the meeting room. Miniature palaces were the description that came to mind when I looked at them, all with their own flair.

I asked him to point out the library which was an easy building to notice. A clock tower I could barely make out the numbers on poked out of the sea of tiled roofs. The inn I wanted to find was harder since it looked like most of the other buildings but I saw a similar building in the area I would guess it was in.

There was also a more styled set of distant towers surrounded by scaffolding that was a church in its eleventh year of delayed repairs.

He pointed out why different quarters had different types of roofs and then dove into the significance the layout would play in a siege by a foreign army or ghouls.

I felt at ease as he continued pointing out buildings and talking strategies I probably wouldn’t remember. He did give me some very interesting pointers on bringing down buildings to block the main arteries into the city that I found so outlandish they’d probably stick with me.

…

I looked at Sam and copied the type of spoon he picked up and how he used it to eat his soup.

We’d spent most of the day sitting against the battlements. In his eyes, I was an orphaned alchemist from a small town with so much talent that Annalise had picked me up.

It was mostly his own conclusion from what I’d told him, all truth except for the identity of my Mother and the duke’s curse. I even included a slightly different version of the story of how I met the knights since that apparently wasn’t being kept a secret anymore. It involved me trying to stop them from unknowingly robbing my cottage rather than trying to take the doll back.

He was far more offended on my behalf than I thought he would be, I hadn’t even included the doll part, and I had to beg him not to cause any trouble over it. I was a bit more vague in my storytelling after that.

He’d told me of the mischief he and his brother would get up to with some others when they were kids. I was shocked none of them had seen the inside of a cell for some of the parts but the people affected were mostly their parents and siblings.

After a long while we were found and summoned to dinner. The tower had already been covered in shadow by the sun dipping below the battlements.

He introduced me to Madam and Mister Manafold as well as his smirking brother Chet. We took up two seats just over halfway up the long table with Yanla and another two senior staff members between us and the duke’s children. Next to Annalise was a younger boy who had his mother’s curly brown hair and his father’s brown eyes, Alonso.

The duke and his partner seemed to have solved their argument from last night or were doing a good job at keeping it out of the conversation.

People I knew like Jeremy and Faraya were there with their own guests. Sam pointed out and named the rest which involved other chiefs and business owners. They took up the opposite side and the rest of ours. I would have felt very out of place with what everyone else was weaning if Jeremy’s partner wasn’t the farrier from earlier, still in his own overalls.

He tried to have a conversation with me about the horses but we were a bit far apart for that to work.

Sam was very generous with his retelling of what I’d told him earlier whenever his mother tried to talk to us. I got the sense his dad knew something more since he grinned at a few of the answers. The other chiefs knew so it made sense he would.

I wondered how much he knew and if it would find its way to Sam before I could find out if I was allowed to tell him.

The next plate brought before me was different than everyone else which got me a few looks.

“Which spoon do I use?” I whispered into Sam’s ear. There were two left to choose from after the soup. The others had a fish dish so I didn’t think copying him would work again.

He shrugged. “People who hold out on others when they tell stories don’t get help.”

“I wasn’t holding out…much,” I said and punctuated it with an appropriately hard tap to his shin under the table. My slip up and late shift after not realising telling him how I met the knights only really worked with the full story, didn’t seem to have gone unnoticed.

“It’s that one for risotto,” he said and pointed in the general area of the forks. I glared at him until he specified.

“Are you allergic to fish?” Chet asked from my other side.

“No, I just don’t enjoy eating meat,” I said. Usually, it would end there be he went on about how it was necessary and that was probably why I didn’t have any muscle. I leant away from him as he tried to squeeze my arm to demonstrate his point.

I was saved by a note being handed to the Duke and everyone eyeing him, hoping for it to be shared.

“Valeria?” he said to my surprise.

“Yes?” I asked and saw Sam and other peoples’ eyes widen out of the corner of my vision. For the first time, it occurred to me that not only the people that worked for him would call him ‘sir’ like with the captains. He didn’t seem to care so I ignored all the looks.

“I just got confirmation of a meeting tomorrow afternoon that I want you to attend.”

“With the teachers?” I was quite pleased with myself for putting the two pieces of information together. Jeremy also looked amused.

“Yes…just be around the palace at that time. Maybe by the hammock that Yanla has been organising for you.”

“Really?” I asked Yanla who nodded while placing a piece of the delicate white fish into her mouth. She chewed and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin before speaking.

“Yes, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the girl sleeping by the pond and I think it might put a stop to that,” Yanla said.

“Oh, sorry,” I said and returned to my risotto, a bit embarrassed. I hadn’t thought that many people had seen me but there were a lot of windows that looked over the pond. Evidence for which was sitting next to me.

For a while, there was only the soft sound of music coming from the enchanted device spinning a disk under a spike. Even Sam hadn’t been able to explain the phonograph to me but his brother had tried.

In between the plates getting taken and another set being placed one of the people across from me gave me a card with silhouettes of people in different clothes styles on it. She invited me to the boutique named on it if I wanted to get new clothing or accessories. Another gave me a card for hairdressing but I didn’t think I would need that one for a while. The last was for blacksmithing and leather work which I politely accepted despite wanting to ask what I would need from there.

The third set of plates was all the same with a collection of mushrooms and stuffed roasted peppers, which I really enjoyed. I managed to get one of Sam’s as well. He got my dessert in return since the cold substance had hurt my teeth and was far too sweet.

Jeremy came over after everyone was getting up with tea to talk to others who had been too far away over dinner. Mostly towards the ducal family and then the chiefs.

He poked and prodded me for how I knew about the ‘vineyards’ and teachers. He wanted to know who I talked to or what I had read. I didn’t care much for the secret but I was enjoying knowing things others didn’t. I planned to tell him about my weird interactions with the crystals and transmission—eventually.

Sam almost ruined my evening by reminding me about my already regrettable decision to join him in more exercise. But I managed to push him to the day after because of my seemingly important meeting the next day.