Chương 322: Invincible

I am exhausted. I missed my sleep last night, between all the screaming in agony (that part was me) and all the bitching about my life choices (that part was Fwatta), and the hours went by while we hashed out terms. Then I got ambushed with love at the school. And I know that is better than any other ambush, but it's not a peaceful nap, and that's what I need. And a little investigation into the assassination attack, not much. So I was in no state at all when it was time for camogie practice.

I traveled from Licard's office to the locker room, handed the coach my doctor's note and took the day off. Licard had tried to talk me into going immediately to my room and sleeping there, but certain things seemed more important. I sat down on the bench outside of the fencing hall. Nobody had built a bench there for me, so as usual I had to do everything myself. Thumper spotted me and came jogging my way.

"Natalie!"

"Hey Thumper. Sorry, is there any chance I could get you to skip practice just for a day? I know that you're the team captain and all but-""I'm the team captain and I've got a vice-captain that needs more opportunities to prove herself," Thumper declared.

"Sit right here." She left at a run, but was only gone for a few minutes. When she came back, she had questions.

"Don't you have practice too?"

"I've got a doctor's note. It turns out that being impaled, exploded, eviscerated, and almost bisected can get you excused from practice," I said. And after a beat: "I'm sorry I had you worried."

"Did you literally just apologize to me for getting vivisected?" I stood up and dispelled the bench, and took Thumper for a walk-and-talk. Maybe it's the gala lifestyle, but I have a hard time just sitting still and talking to people, unless I'm eating.

"I suppose I did. But evisceration and bisection don't quite equal vivisection. Sorry, I'm punchy and details like that are bothering me more than they should. Let me rephrase myself: I am not apologizing to you for getting hurt, I'm just expressing my regrets that you were distressed by this."

"Sounds like a small distinction," she said.

"And not much of a difference. So where are we going?"

"Anywhere our legs take us," I said.

"I feel like too much of my life is constrained by plans and forethought and expectations. Sometimes a walk is just about feeling like you're free to let the moment choose the path." She did walk by my side as I picked a random direction, but she did not let the subject go easily.

"I thought you liked seeing what's ahead, and having a goal."

"I can enjoy more than one thing. I'm not just one set of preferences, unchanging."

"Or is it that you almost died last night and you are reacting to that? Like having a set path might make you dangerously predictable?" I don't hate that she's got me figured out so well. I hate that someone who has me figured out is also pulling away from me.

"So, um, I have been re-thinking the debate issue," I said.

"You raised good points and when I took them home with me to think them over, the-" She swept her hand as if clearing that away.

"Don't worry about it, princess. You were probably right, from the very beginning. Someone in your position has to have a very different view of what disagreement means at a conceptual level. I use swords for exercise and entertainment, and I use debate the same way. My world includes scoring points in a way that doesn't get anyone hurt, unless you twist a knee.

You are handling discussions with some very dangerous and powerful people about matters of life and death, and when the discussion is not productive people get impaled and exploded. My methods don't have to be right for you, and I shouldn't push you towards that."

"But I want that," I said.

"Earnestly. Ardently. I want all of this to be something easy, lighthearted. Something where the most points makes a winner and the loser goes home with a silver medal. I want things to be less hostile and vicious. I want to live your way, I want to fight and argue your way."

"What would happen if you did that?" she asked quietly. She kept her eyes on the ground in front of us, the line of shadows dappling as we crossed underneath a tree. What would happen. This did used to be a game. I played it as a game. I won it, as a game. And I would score points, have fun, and log off when I was done. I played it at my leisure, when I felt like it, and I could just undo things that I didn't like. This used to be so just as easy as I could have wanted. But now?

If I just sat back and decided to only engage when I felt like it, to only do the things that would be fun for me? Then this world, which was struggling to become real, would be unmade and dissolve behind a Game Over screen card. And all these people that could have had real lives would all be unraveled.

"I couldn't do that," I said, my steps slowing. That would be the price of me playing nice. If I treated conflicts like they were a contest with rules and sportsmanship, this world is done for.

"I want to be like you. Fencing and debate, and all that."

"I understand," she said, leaning against the trunk of the tree.

"Do you often get what you want?"

"That question feels unfair." It really didn't. It's a very fair question. It just hurts, that's all. I cannot make the decisions that really matter, everything is already decided. If I don't want to lose the whole world and die right along with it, then there are things I need to do. Huge, life-altering things. And yet, I also live a life of pampered luxury. Every day hundreds of things happen exactly how I want.

Between my title, my position, my money, my foresight, my magic, or my actual cheatcodes, I have so many advantages that I really can't ever complain about this life I lead. I sat down on the grass and we just let the conversation go wherever it wanted. No plan, no goal. Just let the moment pick the path. I don't know if Thumper is slipping out of my hands. But I can enjoy quiet moments with her, anyway. I walked into the dining hall feeling a little more restored.

Thumper is good for my soul, the same way a Sevenday at Skydown is. A few hours ago I walked in here and was almost overwhelmed by the reaction of a hundred students who thought I was dead. So when I walked in for dinner, I was not sure what sort of reception I was going to get. Apparently over the afternoon, people have had enough time to get used to my return, and the word has spread.

I'm still getting a lot of stares, though; just because the surprise and disbelief of my survival have been processed, does not mean that everyone is ready to stop staring and gossiping about the girl who had a hole stabbed through her body and then exploded. Well, it's one way to get people talking. And I have to keep reminding myself that getting people talking is what really saves the world. But that's not the only way to look at it.

"You have to go tonight," Elica said, pointing at me with her fork. She's got a lamb roast over a bed of rice with steamed greens, and flecks of rice are still on the tines as she gestures.

"I am telling you, if you make an appearance tonight, you will establish yourself to a degree that you never could before. Walking into the Hall of Arts will make you a legend."

"More of a ghost story," Larianne added.

"Just another kind of legend," Elica insisted, and turned from her back to me.

"Right now, nobody in those circles knows you're alive. You got exploded, the room was demolished, a handful of people saw your phantom ascend to be rejoined with your goddess, and that was that. People have searched the whole city for signs of you, and the only ones who know you're alive is one healer off in the quietest corner of Meadowtam, and the people in this Academy who are all confined to the premises and cannot communicate out until the mail pickup in the morning.

There's not even a rumor about you surviving that attack!"

"I follow you, but so what?" I said.

"So! So if you go strutting back in, you're invincible. You've shown that you're dangerous and gutsy and shrewd, and there's certainly enough rumors about you being a murderess and blowing up whole villages-""There's what?"

"- but nobody has any context for a feat like this! Maybe nobody saw what happened after the explosion, but there were dozens of people who saw you take an extremely fatal wound, before the explosion. And all that blood!" She took a bite of her roast. There was a small pool of lamb's blood on her plate, the roast was only medium-done.

"What she's saying is that if that didn't kill you, nothing could kill you," Larianne clarified. Vancy was clinging to my left side, her head resting on my shoulder. She sniffled occasionally. Rinnie was sitting far away from me. She glared at me suspiciously.

"Hey, princess," Rinnie said, her voice cunning and coy.

"I was just wondering, can you cross a line of salt? Or a circle? I'm just asking for a friend."

"I did not die, I'm not a ghost or any kind of undead," I promised Rinnie.

"That's exactly what an undead ghost would say," she replied with obvious self satisfaction.

"They saw me bounce an arrow off my face," I said, turning my attention back to Elica.

"Sure. And there's lots of spells that can do that. Nobody bothers protecting themselves with spells to survive having their body exploded." Vancy sniffled again, and I patted her hair to soothe her.

"If nothing else, they'll have a hard time hiring assassins to target me from now on," I said.

"Damn right," she chuckled.

"Right now, there's some assassin who's been strutting around all the assassin bars, bragging about killing the coalition princess. As soon as they find out that you're alive, that guy's gonna be a laughingstock."

"You have a strange brain, Elica." And so now I'm headed back. I still have not slept since last time. Instead of attending my study hall or the game night, I'm reapplying my makeup to head back out to the Fashion Week venue. I have considered shredding up my new coat some so that it would look like evidence that I was attacked with massive force and survived, but I decide not to. First of all, and most importantly, I like this coat. I like the counterpoint to Nathan's look.

And secondly, the point tonight is to show that I'm invincible and untouchable. If I look tattered, it creates a perception that if they tried harder they could have gotten me, I would look like I had been wounded. Even if they can see I'm physically fine, it creates an association. And that's why I'm going to walk in like nothing ever happened. This is literally the last place I want to be. I am having flashbacks already. I have to be crazy, to be walking back into the same place I almost died.

Just to make a point. Just to make an impression. Just to prove that I'm not terrified, when I am terrified, because I should be terrified. I'm wearing the same gown and coat but I did stop by my room and take a shower, change my shift and stockings, and get re-dressed.

Normally there are good reasons for me to make a more discreet entrance to the events I attend, but tonight nothing can take the place of stepping out of my portal directly onto the front steps of the Hall of Arts, pausing to be seen there, and then walking right past the heralds and doormen without pausing. They hustled to get out of my way. The foyer of the building held a hundred people and a thick energetic babble of voices that died utterly when I strode in.

I did not pretend at being serene or elegantly tranquil, I marched in like I have had a very bad day. A quick summary: on Sixthday I walked in looking vulnerable and cute, and "my brother" reduced me to tears. On Sevenday I return, stronger than ever, militant and severe- only to get exploded and "killed". And so now on Oneday I walk in, unhurt, unbothered, and on the warpath. On Sixthday, all the conversations in the room were about the usual Fashion Week intrigue.

On Sevenday, all the talk was about the rebellion getting declared on Sixthday. On Oneday, the topic of the day was that I got killed. My, what will they talk about tomorrow. The crowd parted, a lane twenty feet wide just for me. People flinched back like I would scorch anyone who came too close. I let my face encourage that perception. I passed the doorway into the main venue, a double-door bottleneck separating the entrance spaces from the main battleground.

And when I stepped through that door, I walked into a spreading silence and a room full of shocked faces staring. Jaws dropped, faces paled, someone dropped a glass and the sound of its shattering was almost the only sound in the room. Left to right I glared across the room, my eyes connecting with everyone present, one at a time. The silence held suspended until I was done. I walked over to the Harigold entourage, and moved through their stock-still forms until I reached Petunia.

I stepped over broken glass to reach her. I said nothing, but I took her two hands in mine, held them tightly, and let her hold my eyes for several frozen moments. When I could see fear replaced by relief, I gave her a smile and a last squeeze, then turned and stalked across the room. Everywhere I went there was a subtle movement through the crowd. People pacing me, slipping through the party at a discreet remove, wearing Harigold colors and Harigold fabrics.

I moved within a ring of security and bodyguards on high alert. I ignored the Freckentop delegation. There were four close members of the royal family in attendance, and I saw their bodyguards contract in around them, a tight formation ready to intervene. I did not walk close enough to them for the purple lightning to warn me that sorcery-canceling sigils were in play. Instead, I headed for the group second-nearest them: the Duskare.

I paused only once, crossing near the stage and the seating, then I continued on my way. My shoes clacked as I approached the house of quiet killings. Their house motto was "bold in action, humble in words". It sounds like the motto of a people who do brave things but do not brag about them loudly. That's the sort of distinction that really highlights the double-think and double-talk of this culture.

"Bold in action" is not "brave and faithful", it's "decisive and violent". And "humble in words" does not mean "modest and self-effacing", it means "we keep our secrets". A paladin's motto for a house of hitmen. And yet we have people like Vancy Tarcelle who are surprised and dismayed to find out that Duskare has assassins.

There are so many people in this world that really do believe the cover stories and buy into the hype, who think that their monarchs care about them and that the nobility act out of kindness and thoughtfulness. There's no reason why it can't be that way, other than the fact that it isn't that way. The current Marquis of Stableholt is back at the home province, overseeing the border and local affairs.

Or, just avoiding Hearstcliff right now- being the duke of the assassins' guild is not a safe job during Fashion Week, too many ambitious heirs getting too much practice. But as Quarl had explained to me, the local branch leader was a rotating position, a moving target. I was able to identify the man I wanted just by following the darting eyes and questioning looks. I stopped in front of him. Well-tanned, wide eyes, weak jaw.

"We're not going to have a problem, are we?" I seethed, glaring. He did not insult us both by pretending not to know what I'm talking about. The whole room was watching us, dead silent. I am miraculously alive, and as Elica pointed out, somewhere out there is an assassin who has been bragging about killing the iron-skinned princess. Every time a difficult assassination is performed, Duskare's clout increases. But on occasions like this, he recognized that it's best to take the loss with grace.

"No, my lady," said the Duskare spokesman. I curtsied, he bowed, and I moved back to where Petunia was standing. It's almost guaranteed that he had not ordered the hit. He probably had no idea who did, I doubted his organization was that cohesive. There's too many independent operators, secret sects, splinter groups, conspiracy cabals and self-taught amateurs in that business. But somewhere in his family there is someone who trained, advised, or provided support.

I'm pretty sure the hit was called by the royals, Duskare would not have made a move like this on their own. But their hands are dirty here too. And if I'm going to live through this month, I need Duskare to withdraw all training, support, and advisement for all attempts against me. A sorcerer tried to murder me. The reason that he or she almost succeeded was because the professionals were lending a hand. So that's the highest priority. But as long as I'm here, I might as well ruin Nathan's day.