Chương 312: Chaper 312: Unfolding

The Tsilven earl's hands close on my shoulders and pulled at me, it was not a hug but just to tuck me into the crook of his arm as he stared after my brother's departing back. His face flushed a hard red that was mottled with bright white specks- I think those were tiny scars that only show up when he's pissed off. His breath huffed, he wanted to jump into action- but his instincts said 'fists' and the Fashion Week is not a time to listen to instincts like those.

He froze in indecision until we lost sight of my brother. Only a few seconds to respond, and they were gone before the moment of shock had worn off. For my part, I opened a hand-sized portal and reached into it for a handkerchief. I just brought it up in front of my face, dabbing, keeping my head down. Gotta resist the urge to blow my nose here. This is not the place. I hiccupped and pressed my face hard into the fabric.

"Er, could one of you ladies?...." The Tsilven earl said, floundering in the moment, out of his depth. This situation had quickly gotten more complicated than he was trained for. He seemed like the kind of man that would challenge someone to a duel, but you can't challenge a man to a duel for making his sister cry when she's the leader of the enemy faction and the brother is the leader of your coalition, right? Especially at Fashion Week, which is famously a free-for-all for assassins but prohibited from dueling.

So he had no choice but to try to hand this situation off to someone more adept at etiquette, empathy and navigating difficult waters.

"I've got this, you oaf." I didn't see who was speaking, but her tone was less sharp than her words. Hands took my shoulders and pushed, moving me along. I had to trot to keep up, with my face buried in my kerchief. Two lady earls hustled me to the restroom and people made way. I hid my face in shame, but I could still read the room around me with sorcery. A familiar voice cut through.

"Thank you ladies, I will take it from here." Elica grabbed my arm and towed me through the door, and shut it behind her. Oh good, she was exactly on her mark. The door's closing echoed a moment. She took a wooden wedge from her clutch and dropped it to the floor, then used the toe of her shoe to kick it into place. That door would not open until she removed the wedge.

"Did it work?" she asked when she was done. She looked way too excited to do her part here.

"Like a charm," I said, finally blowing my nose. It was quite an undignified honk. I tossed the handkerchief into the bin and started some water in the sink to wash my face. I was still getting interrupted by hiccups, and I did not bother trying to stop them.

"How did you even do that?" Elica said.

"I know your acting skills better than anyone. You are not good enough to ugly-cry on command, not like that. You had the red eyes, the mucus, everything."

"Essence of allium, it's the family - hk! - that includes onions," I replied.

"I have a moderate affinity, enough for this. Hik! Damn, I'm really a mess here." A small hand-towel flew from a ready basket and into my hand, and used it to help wash my face clean and dry.

"We don't have much time, I need to make myself seen before they start seating people for the big show." It's true that I used onion. I still don't admit to the serpent essence to anyone at all, but using both of them together certainly helped my performance. Dosing myself let me cry for real, but the serpent let me lie when I need to. Operation Brave Face begins. I check that my eyes are still red and tormented, and I channel some horse spirit.

It's still not a good fit, I've only gotten it up to 55%, but that's enough for me to find that skittish, uncertain energy. Just a little extra, because I'm not really much of an actress. I plucked the wedge out, and started my trembling, hiccupping way across the room. The Harigold crowd was positioned as far from the restrooms as possible so that I would walk in front of everyone, pale and shaking, back to the safety of my family.

Elica followed a minute later, and started immediately diving into every gaggle of gossips she could find, spreading the story like a wildfire made of my personal humiliation. Right now, Belisa is escorting Bruce off the premises so that nobody gets any vivid reminders that my brother has a lookalike. A nearsighted, functioning alcoholic lookalike that can't resist the siren call of sarcasm.

"Playing stupid won't make me play along as well," he said. Nathan doesn't talk like that! Dammit Bruce, you're supposed to stay on script! All right, it doesn't actually have to be an Oscar performance, because this is a crowd of drama-hungry aristocrats who will believe whatever they want to believe, and this kind of family drama is so disgusting they could never resist. Rabert's plan, with some of Elica's input to refine the idea. If the gossip is gruesome enough, it becomes unstoppable.

And I can expect that nobody is going to second-guess the story or consider for a moment that this was a setup. Besides, only a couple dozen people actually saw and heard. Everyone else is just getting this second-hand, so they get the story and not the facts. And the story says "Nathan" even if the facts include a man who cannot navigate a crowd without his glasses unless he has an eight-foot-tall guidepost with glowing pink eyes to zero in on. If it's not completely convincing, it'll still work.

I like to overprepare, but this time "good enough" is good enough. The Harigolds folded in around me to block me from outside view, drawing in protectively. I used subtle nudges to produce the effect, showing people which way to move, and everyone outside our group got to see the deeply concerned Harigold family closing in to protect their wounded princess. It's all about optics, and presenting the right image. I can't convince a roomful of blustery military officers that I'm more qualified than my brother.

Even if they don't actually say that the battlefield is no place for a lady, they'll be thinking it. Women have been making great strides in reaching equality in Hearstwhile's military, but the glass ceiling sits right around the lieutenant colonel position. To the generals in this room, women are secretaries and nurses. Nathan's never without his brass-buttoned woolen jacket, a hand-me-down from a great-uncle who served as an enlisted soldier.

He has made militarism part of his public persona from the beginning, and I wear dresses and tiaras. So because I will not convince them I'm the better candidate, I need to convince them that he's the worse candidate. And showing everyone a scene of him bullying his tiny, fragile, innocent-looking sister will just about do it. The kind of person who is born into enough wealth and station, and wants to use that to purchase a marshal's pips and join the army, is a very specific personality.

The kind that craves adventure, but comfortable adventure. A chance to live out the stories, without great personal expense. These are people you can count on for chivalry, when chivalry means giving orders and speaking to allies and not actually bleeding or dying. And that is what I need here: chivalrous men who see a wounded princess and find all that patriotic fervor to rescue her, mostly by spreading rumors and making bold statements while wearing their full dress uniform and carrying a brandy.

I admit that it's a cheap trick, crocodile tears in front of patronizing chivalry, but here's one upside: nobody who knows anything about me would ever suspect that I would voluntarily sacrifice my own dignity like that. The other upside is that it's working. Apparently Petty has a chivalrous streak too.

"Oh my gods!" she exclaimed, seizing me up in a hug and taking me off my feet.

"Oh Natalie!" Obviously I let her hug me because everyone in my family gives great hugs, even if it is awkward to dangle in the air like this.

"Petty. It's onion. We discussed this." I don't object at all, I remind myself that this is just really helping to sell the story. Poor little Natalie.

"I'm sorry, you just looked so, so-" she did not finish that sentence. She just hugged. Seems like I'm getting a lot of this today. I have to wonder, did my work with Zyco today actually qualify for using my Disguise skill? Even my serpent affinity does not affect people this much, and everyone seems to have a hard time knowing how to react to me today. I don't think the changes I've made have been that drastic. Then again, maybe I really do look more 'damsel' than I thought. What an odd idea.

I hugged back, and after a minute or so Petty felt reassured enough to let me back down onto my feet. I glanced at the tabletop for my ice water, and spotted my ring sitting on a napkin.

"Ah, bless," I said, picking it up.

"Thank you, Belisa." Her voice said, "Oh, you're welcome. This is so much more fun than I expected!" I don't know where her voice came from, but it was there. Through the ring's diameter, I could see a window into the dressing room; Nathan working hard at adjusting the dresses as best he could on short notice. He's been so busy with needles and thread that he hasn't even noticed the door locks are fused shut. Layers of contingencies, that's what it's about.

All of his models are having trouble with the fit of their dresses because all of them have shrunk slightly since they were fitted. I can promise you, this is a very difficult problem to fix. Once the shrinking salve soaks into the skin, it's going to stay for hours. I made sure to study the process carefully while I was getting fitted for this dress. It's such a simple form of sabotage. He's spent weeks making these dresses to these girls' exact measurements and specifications.

And then on the day they're meant to be displayed, Belisa takes a jar of shrinking salve and runs it over them, smearing it until it sinks into the skin. They can't notice anything that would indicate she's there, after all. And reducing their size by just an inch of height is not going to be remarkable. Barely noticeable, just enough that someone very perceptive might say "hmm, I sort of remember you being taller". But the jump from "hmm, I thought-" to "Natalie has done something to my models" is just ridiculous.

And honestly, he'd be much more likely to assume I'd done something to the dresses. That's why he took the dressing room furthest back, so that my sorcery would not reach all the way to his workspace. Affinity for fabrics is one of the things I'm sort of known for. Nathan has known me to doctor up my clothing from the first days I was a sorceress. If he had time to think about this, that is. He does not though, because right now he's scrambling just to keep up. He's got dresses to take in.

Reducing his models by even that small amount is enough for the fit of the dresses to go from 'bespoke' to 'off the rack', which in Fashion Designer world means the difference from 'acceptable' to 'laughingstock'. Apparently Nathan had learned enough about the world of fashion designers to know how much pressure there is to get every detail perfect. And while he's at it he's learning the difficulties of working with georgette, batiste, and chiffon. He wanted frilly, frivolous gowns, after all.

So right now he's going through a process that everyone hits when they step into an established field and try to innovate without learning the fundamentals: he has fucked around where nobody goes, and now he finds out why nobody does that. Right now he seems wholly unaware that this is sabotage at all. He seems to believe that all of his models just spontaneously lost about ten pounds since their last fitting.

And in the thick of a crisis like that, it's almost impossible to think clearly enough to figure out how this could have happened. I know this well, from personal experience when I was in similar circumstances, blindsided by his schemes. Confusion reigns. The girls are making helpless faces, and I can't hear what's being said but it just looks like they're baffled. Nobody could ever suspect something like 'shrinking salve'.

And while he's being kept busy there, his name is being dragged through all the mud that these muckrakers can find. And, frankly, mine too, I don't come out of this interaction looking strong. But that's why this is just Phase One. Kimothy came through the gathering with plenty of excuse-me and coming-through. He was almost breathless as he caught up to us.

"I'm sorry I missed it!" he said.

"I've already heard about it twice just now!" His face looked dismayed as soon as he saw me, sympathy welling when he looked at my reddened eyes, my swollen cheeks.

"You've got him bottled?" I asked.

"Completely," Kimothy assured me.

"Fused the doors entirely. There's no way in or out of that dressing room. I'll open the door that leads to the main stage when the show starts." This trick is amusing. We've explored how sorcery can poison people by creating substances and then removing them after the fact, even from miles away. What Kimothy has done is to use sigil-printed chips of obsidian to seal the doors.

And now, remotely, while he's got a great alibi, he can remove them one at a time to control which doors can be opened at what time, without appearing to do anything at all, and from too far away to be credible. After all, sorcery has limits. I've seen how my love interests can pull together for a dungeon run, but it turns out they are much, much better at covert ops. My heart, it swells with optimism.

Right now, fifteen earls with access to lots of underlings are all trying to circulate the story as fast as they can, because they each want control over this narrative, and the chance to shape the best gossip of the night. The story of Big Bully Nathan and Poor Weak Natalie. I'm not wild about that image, but it's a narrative I can control and a label I can beat. A ripple started to move through the crowd.

Docents and ushers were moving through, conferring with the guests, and there was a tide of humanity and wealth moving towards the seats.

"Looks like we're about to start the show," Petty observed. I gathered Petunia, Kimothy, and a handful of my closer cousins, various earls of Harigold, and we headed for our reserved seats. Trazom and Kurumi met us along the way, shared nods, and they folded into our formation. Meanwhile, Tiviti and Rabert were going to sit with their respective Houses, laying low in plain sight.

They had both been seen with me at gala events before but not often, and most of the people attending this event were highly-stationed but not actually regulars of the circuit, so unlikely to recognize either of them and tie them to me. Sending those two to rile up rumors and movement against me is not something I would do at most events, someone would say 'wait, why are you acting against your friend/classmate/crush?', but here they can act as strangers.

While we haven't seen Quarl yet, I have to assume he's busy and successful. He's playing the free safety, he's undercover and circulating, with his ears open and garotte ready, watching for signs that things are falling apart. He is in charge of locating small unexpected problems before they develop into big problems. Since we're on track, he's either unnecessary or he's very necessary, and we won't know until the debrief.

My seats were right up front, and Kimothy lifted away both of the tented placards so we could take our places. Normally the king himself sits in this spot. But this time I made sure that his people would not get there before my people. Learning from mistakes is key, all those bad sessions we had before just serve to make sure everything goes smoothly tonight. But I do hope that in the future we won't need such convoluted ploys.

Purple lightning crackled before me for an instant, tiny thread-thin bursts of energy as competing magics collided. It swirled a bubble around me for an instant and then faded harmlessly. Kimothy stared.

"What was that?"

"We just entered the zone of the royal's security countermeasures," I said, and I let him help me into my seat with a held hand.

"That never happened before," he said.

"That was visible. Wards don't really do that." I smiled, untroubled.

"Well, we're not exactly ordinary sorcerers any more, are we?" He looked skeptical. That bubble of jagged threads had emerged around me, not anyone else. Credit where it's due, the royals have invested in the good stuff, not just brutish overengineering like before. It is really hard to get sigil-work to blanket a radius or a projected area. They are normally attached to a physical object, or projected onto a physical object.

You can get them to affect everything in a room, using the walls as boundaries, or anything inside of a scribed circle. But "within a spatial distance from epicenter" is a lot of extra work. This is the concession they've granted after the debacle that was the egg-race, clearly they recognize that they can't just blank out a whole party just to silence me. They can't afford to drag that scandal again, not this weekend.

But after that trial, they know that I'm not afraid to threaten magical violence against their persons. So they spend for the expensive difficult wards. I try a couple of things, just to test. It's one thing to get hit by a suppressing ward, but you have to at least try, right? The crown and the throne were seated off to their side with their retinue, with a little distance so it doesn't look like they're trying to crowd back into their old spot. They can get away with acting resentful, but not envious.

Their entourage looks a little less numerous than usual, it looks like they weren't able to bully the venue and the council into giving them as many extra tickets as usual. I held my face still and even and neutral while I tallied these observations. And I scanned the hell out of the area. Knives, weapons, glasses or bottles that could be broken for a jagged edge. I can still feel where the attuned objects are, independently of my spells. Fortunately the row behind me is stuffed full of bodyguards.

Nobody will be slipping between the rows to approach me from behind. Nobody unauthorized comes within ten feet of me when the lights are off and anti-sorcery wards are active. It takes longer to dim the lights than usual, there are far more and they're on a higher setting than usual. So we hurry up and we wait, sitting in a murmuring silence in a crowded room, staring at a stage that will soon present us with a wonderful display of nothing of consequence. Let the disaster commence.