NOVEL WEB Chapter Seven: New Friends
Chapter Seven
New Friends
Roja had never ridden in a carriage before. That’s not to say he’d never ridden on a carriage before. Maria, him and other kids would dare each other to climb onto moving carts and carriages and see how far they could get, on the fanciest ones they could find. It usually didn’t last that long, but he figured it had given him an idea of what it was like.
He was wrong. The King’s Road heading north was well-worn, but he still felt very much like a bean being shaken in a jar, bouncing around. Truth be told, it wasn’t all that bad. The seats were padded, and the windows brought in a much-needed cool air in the summer heat. And not having to walk all this way was nice.
He looked to his companions. The carriage, the second in a caravan of five, was quite wide, and allowed for two opposite benches for four people each, one looking back and one looking forward. Himself, Maria and Selico sat with their backs towards the horses, and seeing the landscape go by backwards was definitely new.
Selico, on the right side of the bench, had been allowed to take some of the library’s books with him, and despite the fact that he seemed to be getting a little pale in the face, his focus was only on the pages in front of him. One day, when he was old and grey, Roja would consider getting into books as much as Selico. Maybe.
Maria, sitting between them, was enraptured in conversation. Roja had to pretend not to be annoyed. The bench opposite them had some of the kids that had participated in the Mad Queen’s “studies.” Iana was one of them, looking as striking as ever. Roja stole a look every once in a while, acting like he wasn’t looking for her specifically. Something about her set his skin on edge, and he couldn’t tell if it was a good or a bad thing. Thinking about who she used to be and who she was now was like picking at a scab, not painful enough to stop him from doing it and too interesting not to keep prodding it.
The others on the bench were happy to answer Maria’s barrage of questions. At first she’d been interrogating them, certain that the Mad Queen had done all kinds of strange experiments on them.
The boy on the far left, Eodhan, directly opposite Roja, had short hair, shaved on one side, and wore clothing that would give a nobleman pause, although the lack of sleeves was certainly an interesting choice. He had a light stubble, and his voice was lower than Selico or even Roja’s, despite his light frame and their apparently similar age.
Between him and Iana sat two more kids. One a younger girl, Aisha, who had been shy at first but happy to be included in the conversation as it went on. The other an older boy, heavyset and confident, a cocky smile and dark brown hair that hung in heavy locks. His name was Maximilio, and proud.
“But she didn’t do anything to you before?” Maria asked again. She’d asked the question several times, and seemed to have a hard time accepting the answer. “Surely she made you try things you weren’t comfortable with!”
Maximilio shook his head, grinning. “Not at all. She did not offer us anything we did not ask for, Maria. All she did was ask us questions, and then asked us what to do with the answers we gave ourselves.”
“But… all of you?”
“Not really,” Eodhan said. “Plenty of children just go back home to their families. We are those that chose not to.” The other kids nodded with a painful sincerity. Roja stared out the window, at the mounted warriors that flanked them on all sides.
The cavalcade was, obviously, well protected. The King and Queen’s carriage was at the front, and with what seemed to Roja like half the army riding along with them, nobody was going to try to rob them.
“What sort of questions?” Selico asked, looking up briefly from his book. “Surely a few questions can’t be enough for someone to turn their entire life around, abandon their family, change who they are at such a fundamental level?”
“You don’t understand,” Aisha said. “I didn’t abandon my parents.” Iana put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “After I told them what I told Queen Vera, they told me to change my answer or… or…”
“Not come home at all,” Eodhan said coldly. “Not all choose as we do.”
“The questions themselves are quite simple,” Maximilio said. “‘Do you ever feel like you should have been someone different,’ for example.” Roja scoffed, and then realised all eyes were on him. He felt his skin itch when Iana gave him a curious look.
“I’ve spent too long in an orphanage for that question to mean anything,” he said, and shrugged. “Of course I’d choose another life if I could. One where I hadn’t spent weeks wondering what, if anything, I’d get to eat. One without fleas and fighting over food or shelter.” He clamped his mouth shut and looked out the window again.
“Well, there is more to it than that,” Iana said softly, “but I understand. That’s why the questions keep changing. Every one of us is different, after all, and at first Queen Vera had only a… very small pool of reference. More nuance is added every single time one of us is found.”
“Such as?” Selico asked.
“Well, at first, there were questions about one’s… attraction,” Iana explained. “‘Have you ever felt attracted to someone of your own sex?’” She chuckled at Selico and Maria’s responses. “It was thought that people like ourselves were ‘meant’ to simply be a sex we weren’t born as due to our sexuality, but that went out the window quite quickly.” Max and Eodhan both chuckled.
“So what are the questions now?” Selico asked. Roja saw the frown on his forehead. He knew the boy liked his answers straightforward, and he wasn’t getting them.
“Hypothetically,” Maximilio said, “if you found a potion, which you knew was magic—”
“How do I know?” Selico asked. “I don’t know magic.”
“It’s made by a friend of yours who is a magecraft. The world’s best magecraft,” Max continued, not in the least bit annoyed at Selico’s interruption. “He tells you this potion will do exactly as it says, with no side effects, harmful or otherwise. If you drink it, it turns you, Selico, into a woman. Or you, Maria, into a man. Nobody you knew will remember you as the person you were before, whatever name you choose will be the name everyone knows you as. You are now… whoever this person is. The question, then. Do you drink it?” Roja frowned. What kind of strange question was that, and what was that supposed to say about someone’s identity? Like he’d said before, if it meant taking him out of the hardships he’d known in life, there were few chances he wouldn’t have taken.
“Huh,” Selico said, seemed to think about it for a moment, and then went back to reading his book. Everyone stared at him, and the carriage grew quiet. He looked up, slightly confused at the attention. “What?”
“What’s your answer?” Iana said with a happy smile.
Selico looked at her with a dispassionate curiosity. “Does it matter? It’s a hypothetical.”
“It did to us,” Aisha said. “It’s important.”
“I think,” Maria said, “actually, before I answer: Can I turn back after? Or is it permanent?”
“Just for the hypothetical,” Iana said,” let’s say permanent.”
“Then I’d have to think about it,” Maria said. “Being a man sounds like it’d make some things easier, but others harder.”
“Here’s the thing,” Iana said. “This choice is not based on logic alone.”
“It’s worth considering,” Selico said. “Intellectually, most people do not get to just… switch bodies. I’d be curious.”
“Even if you couldn’t turn back?” Maria said. “That sounds terrifying.” Selico shrugged, and the kids on the other bench looked at him intently.
“My body simply carries me from one point to another,” he said. “How it fits together interests me only when something goes spectacularly wrong.”
“Interesting,” Eodhan said. “Extending the hypothetical, what if you could not turn back, and people still knew you from before? Some might still see you as who you used to be, and be upset with you for relinquishing your old identity.”
“That’s a harder choice to make,” Selico said into his book. “Life has enough opposition already, and I do not know if I’m interested in making enemies.”
“Logically sound reasoning,” Iana said. “What about you, Maria? What does your gut say? Terrifying only?”
“I- I don’t know,” Maria said. “It’s a lot to think about. I take it all of you said yes?” There was a chorus of affirmations and nods. “I’d need to think about it. What about you Roja? What do you think?”
“I think I need some fresh air,” Roja said, and jumped out of the moving carriage. Grabbing hold of the edge of the roof, he deftly flipped himself up onto it. He heard the shrieks and giggles from the girls inside, and he felt his stomach tie itself into knots when he heard Iana laughing, too. But it was good to get away from the stuffiness. He sat down and enjoyed the sun hammering down on him for a bit, the carriage bouncing around.
“How’s the view from up there?”
Roja looked down. The Queen rode alongside them. It took him a second to realise it was her, since she seemed to be wearing regular armour. He looked ahead at the royal carriage, and saw King Clarus riding a horse right next to it. The Queen laughed. “We get cooped up,” Queen Vera said. “Bit too crowded in there?”
Roja nodded. “I’m not sitting in a little box for… how much longer?”
“A week, give or take,” the Queen said. “If we’re lucky and the mountain pass gives us no trouble.” She caught Roja’s look of confusion. “It’s been a hot summer,” she said. “Melting snow has made some passages harder to traverse, especially for the horses.”
“It’ll be fine!” a voice from behind Roja bellowed, and he almost fell off the carriage. He looked behind him. The large mercenary, Rubicus, rode up to them. He sat on a horse larger than any Roja had ever seen. “Let’s get you a horse, boy. You can’t be comfortable up there!” When he grinned, the creases around his eyes drew a network of lines that looked like the map of a river delta.
“I don’t know how to ride!” Roja shouted back. Rubicus looked behind him at one of the soldiers, snapped a finger and pointed forward. A minute later, a horse without a rider was ridden forward.
“No time like the present! This is one of the reserves,” Rubicus said. “She’s a bit timid for my liking, but should be perfect for you, yeah?”
By now, their exchange had drawn attention, and Roja felt the eyes of everyone around on him. If he said no, he’d probably look like a scared child, but if he said yes, he’d look like a child trying to prove himself. He could tell in the eyes of Rubicus and some of the others that they were expecting him to make an ass of himself and then crawl back into the carriage, red in the face.
“Sounds good!” Roja said with a wide grin. Carefully, he jumped off the carriage, keeping pace with Rubicus. “Give me a hand, big man!” He held up his arm, Rubicus lifted him like weighed nothing, and put him in the saddle. He slid his feet into the stirrups like he’d seen people do.
“Okay,” Rubicus said, “now carefully lower y—” Roja heard him slightly too late, and he felt a bolt of queasiness go through his stomach and up into his throat. There was the collective hiss of indrawn breath and commiserate groans. “Yeah… it’ll do that. Just breathe, it’ll pass,” Rubicus said softly.
Roja felt his ears go red as he heard Iana giggle softly from the carriage window, and it took every effort to sit up, breathe deep, and laugh along with her.
