Sixteen Feet of Steel Chapter 21

*Before…

I have one glass to get to my rooms and get cleaned up and then head to Lady Tatiana’s office to meet up with her.
There’s more blood in the things and the pad and I need to wash some more but my underwear was fine and I use the jakes and get cleaned up and then get some more clothes and such and kit myself for this whole damned woman’s mark experience and I head off to go to Lady Tatiana’s office.
There’s a couple of squires outside and they ask me to wait and show me to a bench and one even offers me a cup of tea which I’m grateful to have and sip at it and wait as there’s obviously some business going on and there’s other’s showing up and they have what looks to be a rolling rack of dresses and gowns and other things and the women are looking at me and I’m blushing as I realize that the size of most of these things are sized for me.
Finery female finery and all the kit to go with it from the clothes to the shoes by the look of it to scents and cosmetics.
Oh… oh I was not, definitely not expecting this to be happening and so soon.
I’m not sure that I’m ready to be my sister Gracia just yet.

*And Now…

Lady Tatiana comes from her office and holds open the large ornate wooden door for the things to be brought in and there’s so many things and she’s looking at me as more things are being brought in and they look like finery and clothes that are far, far too big for me and they’re definitely for her.

She looks to the squires. “We are good for now ladies we will call you if we need you.”

They leave and she closes the door and she smiles. “I thought it best given everything Christiana that I do most of this training with you by ourselves until you get to where you know what a girl of your upbringing should know by now.”

I’m nodding a little vacantly and still holding my tea cup and saucer.

“That’s very good Lady because I have very little knowledge of how to do any of this and honestly this scares me.”

“Scares you?”

“My sister Gracia would go on and on about these things and it was like her and my mother and some of the other ladies at court were speaking a whole other language.”

“I think I perfectly understand that. It took me a good long time to be comfortable with being myself.”

I look at her and she’s a stunning woman, she just is but Lady Tatiana is huge. Almost seven feet high and big shoulders and large muscled arms and then there’s her huge breasts and she’s got lots of curves too with wide hips and a well-trimmed waist from lots of exercise.

Okay I’m staring at her actually and most of it is not the awe of a lad that is my age but I’m really coming from the girl’s or the woman’s perspective. I’ve never been in the naked presence of a woman like her and by naked I mean naked as she’s undressing in front of me and she motions for me to do the same.

“Life’s not going to wait on you Chrissy.”

I set down the cup and saucer on the tea trolley and I start to disrobe.

I understand more and more sometimes the need for women to want to cover up and it’s not just a sense of modesty it’s vulnerability and while Lady Tatiana doesn’t scare me I’m actually even smaller or I feel that way out of my clothes and especially compared to her.

I’m relieved that there’s no blood this time when I get out of my underpants and she looks at me and she has this look of understanding. She points to a box of things. “There’s pads there.”

“Oh.” I go and investigate the box.

There’s cloth pads and they are just sort of as the name implies with a long padded and filled section in the bottom of the crotch and with that there’s small strings there too that are like for you to wear them like under things and they’re of very stretchy wool or some such and it actually reminds me in a way of a riding jock or a codpiece.

I slip them on and color as I do so. “I will be glad when the potion has kicked in.”

She grins at me. “Aye many say that now and in truth there’s a lot of freedom in taking the potion as well.”

I nod. “I can see that.”

She’s choosing herself some really fine undergarments with what I think is silk and then there’s lace and while it looks like it’s far more fancy that it’s practical it looks amazing on her.

White with very pale violet she’s wearing and it goes with her silver hair and the lace and silk cups and lifts and cradles her in this way that actually frames and accentuates her womanly body talking it from what it was to actually a few steps into that whole realm of fantasy.

I used to covet the novelettes with pictures of women dressed such as her that were every so oftenly passed from the hands of young noblemen…well I’m sure the older ones too only so many of the older ones had legitimate women to be doing that with.

She looks to me. “Here Chrissy I’ll help you pic something out.”

The first thing we’re doing is finding a brassier, it’s a lot like a breast band or top-corset but it’s fancy. It’s what she’s wearing and it’s as much to be seen as not. The point is literal titillation. Seen but not, yearned over but not acknowledged.

We find one of the ones there that goes well with my hair and my eyes and it’s white silk with a really pale blue lace and scalloping with embroidered flowers and there’s a soft silked and padded under framing that’s actually fine ceramic links that pushed up and lifts.

It fastens in the front and it takes some of the usual obligatory adjustments to get my slight breasts into a sort of state where their comfortable and then I looked in the mirror.

“Oh...oh my is that me?”

“Aye indeed it is, you’re much like your mother. A rare beauty Christiana.”

I’m blushing hard at that and I There’s not a lot of point actually denying it either. I really wish that I didn’t sound so vain for this but as where I once stood and now I’m at I’m a young girl, a young woman and I’m fair and slight but with the promise of more later with pale blonde hair and blue eyes and soft full lips and a pert nose that isn’t too big and not pointed or blunt or odd looking.

I reach and take the matching underpants and slip into them and pull the ribboned drawstring and tie it in a bow. “Honestly Lady Tatiana I have no idea how to handle that, I have no idea of how to live like this including the way that I look.”

“Well that will take time, we all end up learning and the outer stuff the appearance of being able to live with it is the easiest part. The rest we will work on as things go. But honestly there’s a lot of born women that are never good with themselves.”

“Was that including you M’lady?”

“Oh aye, I didn’t always have tits this big and I wasn’t always this tall either. There were lots of learning times for me over the years.”

I blush at her using the word tits and she smiles at me and passes me this lace waist belt with stays and I’m putting it on and she helps me adjust it. “That’s another thing too Chrissy you’re learning still but there’s a lot of things that you still need to know about women too and that we often speak quite frankly about a lot of things.”

“I’ve been saying I’ve been raised in a cloister space lady. But I’ve seen that with the women that I’ve met here on my way here.”

“Good, we’ll get you used to this more and more and that will help you get used to your own body. And the woman’s mark time will help you with that too.”

“It will?”

She looks at me as she’s doing her own waist belt and taking what looks like small suspenders and lining them up and oh…stockings…my sisters wore them they’re like hosiery but different as there’s two instead of hose being vaguely trouseresque.

The oh my feelings are very strong right now as I can see myself in the mirror and I can actually feel the sensation of silk stockings sliding over my legs and that feeling is one that feels very…it’s hard to really place but it has a feeling that I can only really call decadent in a sort of womanly way.

And honestly it is, this really is the kit of a noble woman to be honest. I’m wearing literally golds worth of materials.

Money, money that could honestly feed some of those villages for years, that could do so much good that it’s…I stop once they’re on and I look at myself in the mirror.

“Lady?”

“Yes Christiana?”

“I can’t do this, I can’t not like this.”

“What do you mean?”

“These clothes, they’re too much. I can’t wear them…I just…not after the places I’ve been and the things that I’ve seen.”

She’s looking at me and she’s smiling.

“You definitely remind me of Aurora, she couldn’t either.”

I look back. “It’s not that I don’t feel honored by these things but I’m wearing very beautiful things that are made of things that would feed a family or even families through a winter.”

She smiles. “I’m not insulted I’m actually proud that you feel this way?”

“Proud?”

She is still getting dressed herself into finery but she’s explaining as she’s looking at me from time to time.

“There’s a cost to being noble that comes with duty and with image and very often those lines get blurred by privilege. Our people expect certain things from our leaders and sometimes that’s dressing like this. It’s expected for us to do this so that we shine for them. But many, many think that this is a right, that the finery and jewels are a right and that they deserve these things.”

“It’s not?”

“No, it’s not. It’s nationalism, it’s patriotism it’s us wearing their pride on our skins and if ever they are to the point where they are not fed or they have needs that are lacking we stop wearing these things, we should even sell them if we have to….if there is great need. It’s a uniform really and we should treat it as such in many ways.”

I nod and chuckle. “I really wish that my sister Gracia had such a speech given to her.”

She chuckles too. “That sort of thinking isn’t taught too much, it’s a mindset that I picked up from a lot of experience.”

“Not comfortable in finery either?”

“No, not at first.” She looks at me with some serious honesty there. “But there is a certain amount of pride our people have in us and in many ways we’re supposed to represent them as us even dressed like this.”

I sigh. “I thought I might get out of this since as a sorceress I can’t inherit under Kingdom laws so I might not have to dress the part of a noblewoman.”

“You might not ever rule but you are still a princess, and your people might need you to.”

“Need me to?”

“Lest those that seek to tear you down and to tear them down use that as a weapon if albeit a social one.”

“But I don’t have to dress like this all of the time right?”

“Definitely not.”

I sigh… “Just to remember the weight of the golds that I’m wearing on my skin.”

“Exactly that.”

“Will I have to wear this to every high table meal?”

“No, we will find you easier clothes to take as well once you’re more used to doing this. If anything it…this should be held back for those times that you really seek to impress that you are the blood and rank that you are.”

I breathe a little easier. “Okay, well I feel better about this.”

“Good, now we can get you dressed and then work on the other things.”

“Other things?”

“Hair and styling and then cosmetics and how to use those.”

“Oh…This is going to be strange isn’t it?”

“Yes, you’re unused to doing it and even if one is not wealthy or nobility women have been doing this for a long, long time with whatever is there and handy.”

I nod and she motions me over to pick out a gown that will make a match to my coloring and I’m a winter and a spring as I can wear sunshine colors as well as the whites and darks of winter colors and tonight we’re going with this silver-white satin with a braided hem that’s small and tight that apparently is cut to further push and lift and reveal my brassier and bosom in ways.

I have cleavage…it’s small and it’s boosted and exaggerated but it’s definitely there.

But the rest of the gown is…well the trunk or the body or whatever it is called in actually a little armor like. There’s no built in corset per se but it’s still one of those things that’s laced up all the same. I feel tight, pressurized like a cooking sausage.

And the skirt…well it’s actually lovely but at the same time there is this part at my hips in the trunk of the dress that is sewn like a flap that flares out and away from me and while not a big flare it’s still there and it makes my hips look bigger?

And the fabric is lighter too except for the braided hem at the bottom which is folded over and then sewn so it’s heavier. I expect it to help with the keeping a draft from blowing things up and…oh…I move a little and it swishes, and it…I twist and it twists.

I twirl and it twirls and raises the weight making it do that flowing up and around dress thing that Gracia and my mother could do.

I’m smiling and I can feel it on my face. It’s strange to kind of find this fun but it’s also that sort of happiness when you find the trick of something. “And here I thought this was some sort of dancing skill when it’s part of the dress.”

“Well it is a skill and you’re only doing it part way and it’s a lot harder to do whilst you’re partnered as well.”

I give her a wry look. “Okay but it’s still sort of fun.”

“Oh aye, dancing is fun.”

I smile a lot wider at that. “That I agree with dancing is a lot of fun and it’s something that I was never really good at or enjoyed as much at all before now.”

“Well I’m glad it’s not been all cramps and awkwardness for you then.”

She gestures to the table where the cosmetics are and a large mirror and I sit and I do it carefully and mindful of my skirts. “No, it’s been invasion and running from Goblins and battles and death.”

Lady Tatiana nods and she looks at me. “Life in the realms has never been simple and especially life here in the west. We’re almost five hundred years behind the central parts of Titan in a lot of ways.”

“It seems more advanced here.”

“In parts, but it’s more that we listen more the elder races like the dwarves instead of discounting them or fearing them like a lot of humanity does.”

I look at her in the mirror. “It shows, there’s more ethnic humans here than I’ve seen home or even in other lands that I had visited.”

She smiles. “Well I try, skin and your parent land and language doesn’t equate to ability in my book so a lot of the time when we go south on a contract I as often as not bring folks home with me.”

She’s passing me things and she’s trying colors on my face and lips in little dabs before cleaning them off until we narrow down some of the shades that seems to go with my look tonight.

“I keep hearing that. That you go out and do mercenary work.”

“Aye, it helps pay the bills.”

“But who would you work for and why and how? I mean you’re the sort of High lord here and peacekeeper?”

“Lady Marshal actually and it’s not simple but it’s doable with the people I leave in charge here and in charge of doing the right thing throughout. Most of the orders I have ties with keep on doing things even as I go on to a job.”

“But mercenary work?”

She chuckles. “Most of your nobles are mercenaries; they get paid so very often for their support of this lord or that lord. I take contracts that are vetted.”

“Vetted?”

“Checked out. I have informants and sources and I get word from them and I will send scouts and rangers as well to see if the situation is morally sound.”

“Morally sound?”

“I don’t fight villagers; I don’t put down honest rebellions or side with tyrants. I usually am called in for defense and more often than not as a siege breaker when it’s called for. And on the rarer occasions I will take my troops into clean and honest battle especially against the darker races.”

“Like?”

“Monsters, there are realms that have kept to power in The Southern realms that still cling to the powers from the old wars like with The Witchkings and the like. Sometimes there will be some warlord that will give these things too much room and too much leeway and they will run wild or worse they’ll get more powerful and organized.”

“So how do you know, how do you find out who needs help?”

“Informants and allies and spies and your mother was good for a lot of that too.”

“She was?”

“Oh aye, the way she could travel and all of the different lands that she traveled to and her own contacts as well certainly helped both here in work and settling things but in other places as well.”

“Oh…we’re at a big disadvantage with her gone now then aren’t we?”

She looks at me in the mirror. “What your mother did was what your mother did, it is not what you have to do Chrissy and it’s not what she would want for you to feel like you have to do.”

“But she changed me?”

“Or she changed you back?”

I….

Oh…

Oh gods and goddesses that might actually be true.

She looks at me and it’s intense even though she’s not really saying anything and her head is beside mine but we’re looking at each other in the mirror. There’s a lot of things in my head right now and some of them are the facts that my brain had gone there, I know I’ve gone there somewhere in the back of my head even if I never admitted it to myself.

It’s just this long moment between us of her not sugaring the truth and her holding my gaze.

Several minutes pass before I say. “Fuck…”

She smiles. “Aye that my girl is the most succinct way of putting it.”

I can’t help it that sort of makes me smile in just that sort of over here manner of fact way that they have here.

Then she passes me a lip-balm pencil thing, it’s like a paper wrapped oil stick that my sisters and my mother used to use to put on their lip paints. Turns out it’s a sort of balm with colors and wax and other things.

After a dozen instructions and me using my powers finally to memorize all the little ins and outs that Lady Tatiana is showing me I’ve gotten it right and I’m wearing a light sort of pink that only actually accentuates my lips and their natural color and then there’s the other things that she’s showing me like the eyelash comb thing and then the wax pencils for my eyes and then to use the small sponge tipped brush to apply shadow and I openly cheat since it is the two of us and I use my powers to very much memorize things as she’s teaching them and to actually store the brain to body movements and feelings of getting it right.

It still requires time though and it takes me multiple attempts to get it right since I actually can’t do what I was Told I still have to memorize the actual doing of the skill. It’s just I can remember what I was told perfectly.

It’s odd that I have normal colors of lip balm and hair and my eyes are very much different with all the shadow and lash paints and shadow but it’s actually very, very amazing and strange seeing how those colors actually make the pale blue of my eyes seem to light up even more and that’s without using my powers.

My hair tonight is simple mostly straight with a few decorative side braids. “Braiding is a skill that you’ll pick up too, There’s a lot of different braid work and sometimes it’s as distinctive as where you’re from or other parts of things in your life.”

“Really that’s not that much a thing home.”

“Well here it’s a thing and we took it in a lot of way from the dwarven folks but it’s a thing in some of the places in The Southlands too.”

“That sounds like a lot to learn really.”

She laughs as she’s getting dressed herself into this very stunning deep blue gown with a cut shelf which is a made space for one’s breasts and it has a set of medium straps and a cowled neckline that is front and back that lends actually this very robe like quality to it but it’s actually very revealing to as well looking somehow chaste…or well clerical, mystical.

Then she does her own hair which she is very good at or she has it very much tamed and she’s fast about it. Her end result is this sultry tumbled look that is yet tamed and wild and just barley conceals her pointed ears.

I’ve still not the courage to ask about that? Elves have pointed ears as do the dwarves from the few that I’ve seen and yet she’s…well at her height she’s not a dwarf and from every description I’ve ever read she’s not an elf either.

Her jewelry is extensively simple too with her wearing this All-gods Cross of this brilliantly shiny and shimmering hard metal unlike anything I have seen and a matching chain and her signet ring of office.

We don our slipper shoes and do a final check and we head down to the great hall to dine and pay to eat at the High Table.

High table is a huge table and it is set within an alcove and that’s connected directly to the high hall that’s used for dining and there’s other nobles here as well as honored guests and students that are here to learn manners and from seeing some familiar faces out there with the food here to learn how to serve.

This is one of the places that one goes if of noble birth to eat, be see, see who else is here at court, meet people and conduct business.

My mind skips a beat when I see the groom and caller at the other end of the hall taking money from folks coming in and it…it even costs money to get announced.

I turn and look at Lady Tatiana.

She grins as we’re making our way to our seats and there are folks that are going through the introductions and the bows and curtseys and the shaking of hands.

“Those I invite are free to eat here and get announced too. But if you want to come to my hall in high meal times to do the usual or to jockey for position then you can pay for your table, you can pay for the food and you can certainly pay to have your vanity appeased in being heralded.”

“Oh they would never do this home.”

“Oh they do, guild dinners, raising funds for wars, private dinners, there’s all sorts of ways that things get paid for like that. I just take a page from the Silk Islanders. They believe there is a very distinct line between charity and hospitality and business.”

I nod. “That must save a lot of money?”

She grins. “Actually I make money from this even after all the room and boards are paid and the cost of cooks, musicians and the food we still make money doing this.”

“Really?”

“The first three rows of tables close enough to be right in our line of sight at this table costs ten golds each for the evening not costing the food.”

“Sweet gods that’s insane…who’d pay that?”

“Many you’ll see and not all of them are nobility.”

Lady Tatiana shakes hands of several more folks as we get to our seats and she remains up to greet her other guests and close to us is a dwarf that’s there with a golden head of hair and a beard that’s very well groomed and braided and she says something to him back and forth in their language with is deep and rick sounding with these soft low rolls of some of their words. It might be hard to get to learn since the sounds and this flow would run together.

Or maybe it was meant to?

He shakes my hand too and we exchange bows and curtsies and his name is Ale’ric. And I’m only a head taller than him but he’s two and a few coppers of me wide and it’s not really fat either. Golden brown eyes and a nice smile he’s very polite and gentle as my hand disappears in his and we exchange names.

His Ale’ric sounds like it might be like Alric or Elric here but there’s this soft e in there like the word Ale and then there’s the soft rolled r and it’s pleasant to say.

He has a little more trouble getting Christiana out but when he does there’s this little hitch in it that I like so it sounds like Christi-hanna and it makes me smile some the way that he says that.

And he smells…he smells wonderful actually like fine leather that meets soap and some kind of very light sawdust and even faintly of a kindly scented oil. I don’t know if it’s more than him and that soap but it’s nice and not too strong and it makes him a very pleasant person to meet.

Nicole is there and she looks amazing and so different with her hair done into curls and some of it pinned back in a very fancy way and she’s wearing one of those shoulderless bodice dresses that you get laced into and she’s in this wild rose pink color that is trimmed with white lace and it’s exposing her strong shoulders and her very decent cleavage for many to see and she smiles when she sees me and we find ourselves sitting together.

“You look amazing!” She gushes and I’m blushing and she’s holding my arms open too so as to get a better look at me.

“I’m so scared and I’m so very unsure of all of this.”

“Well that’s why you’re here with me, that and we’re friends and companions in arms.”

That had a few looks at me and at her that seem interested and maybe speculative as to what that might be about. I swear I can feel them buzzing through my magic.

“Well that’s good is there any tips right away?”

Nicole nods. “Place your fork in your mouth and not through or on your lips. Your lip balm will get smudged a lot less fast and it will last longer.”

I nod. “I can remember sort of that being a thing with my sisters, it’s that whole eating delicately thing or what it sort of amounts to right?”

She nods. “Also keep a napkin close and almost in your hand when your knife isn’t in it. This lets you dab your mouth from grease and whatnot but if you feel something in your teeth you can try and scrape it out while under the cover of cloth or use that cloth to wipe smudges off your teeth.”

I’m nodding and honestly that would work for men too if we generally cared enough…if they generally cared enough to and I’m relieved that I will have something like that to use to not look foolish.

Without it I’d be looking likely like a pink lip balm toothed creature with greens in my teeth.

Nicole sits as we’re all here and it’s strange having servants come in behind to move in our chairs. She says as she’s getting her napkins ready. “Also beware the spill gremlins, they are extra attracted to dresses and they seem to hold getting things off your fork and down your cleavage as the height of their ambitions.”

That make me giggle a little as I heard that and looked directly at Lady Tatiana and then at Nicole who started to giggle along with me.

I missed her even though it really hasn’t been that long; she looks a lot better too.

Then the food comes.

It’s the starters… the little bit before you really eat and it’s a dry white wine served with a prune that’s been stuffed with a little soft tangy cheese and braised or roasted in some sort of meat juices and fat and there’s a generous bit of pepper dusting it.

It’s just this small bit but it does taste great and complex and there’s just one each and it’s sweet, meatishly kissed and there’s that tang of the cheese which is like a farm cheese but made from goat or sheep so it’s rich and tangy and then the pepper and that all goes with the wine which kind of cleanses the mouth and has that sort of pucker that leaves you wanting more of something since there’s that dry sensation there in your mouth.

Then after that comes salad with side dishes. The salad is mixed greens with peas that are in their pods and tiny thin but whole carrots that are barely cooked and about three different kinds of sprouts and three lettuces or something like them and with them are baked shells of potato filled with a dice of the cold potato that was inside of them and a dressing or sauce that I like that’s tangy and yet creamy and one half has this with lots of corn cut fresh and raw from the cob and another has onion and a little pickled onion and it is topped with the green shoots of onion…oh this isn’t the same sauce it’s soured cream.

And those skins are crispy from baking and are very good and there’s cider served with this course deep and rich and sweet.

It’s funny since Ale’ric and a few other of the dwarves are speaking and I hear one of them say. “I don’t go much in for green food.”

The fish is next and that’s funny to Nicole and I since we have eaten a lot of fish on the way to getting here and we share a smile and it’s very excellent and it’s varied. We each have a plated fish that’s been fried in a batter and there’s corn meal in the coating which pleases just about everyone here. Then with it there is these sauced little clay pots with cold fish salads in the that have that creamy dressing/sauce that I like on one of them that is the smoked trout and another tiny pot has smoke mussels that have been soaked and then cooked in butter and beer then the third is dried oysters that are cooked in a cream/or milk that has lots of pepper and egg to make a sort of custard.

They’re small little pots and I actually follow Nicole’s lead by taking my spoon and putting some of those of a forkful of the fried fish.

The Dwarves eat everything bones and all as does Lady Tatiana.

We’re serve beer with it all.

And then we have another beer and it’s time to leave the High table and the dining tables and head to another hall where there are drinks and then there is dancing. Lady Tatiana announces as it starts.

“A break from our meal while the mains are being prepared and a chance to move and dance some of this off so that we are not too idle over full bellies.”

It’s nice to get up and to move around and the other hall is just like home with the hall set up with beverages and servers and musicians to play the music and some are getting drinks but many especially the ones that are around my age are heading out to the dance floor.

I remember Gracia doing just that, ever ready to move and to dance and be merry.

Anoelle is there too though not at our table she’s there for the dancing and she looks very fetching in a blue velvet tunic dress that shows off her large bust quite well and she’s moving like she’s very shy and still sort of unsure of herself in a lot of ways.

Kari is there too and she looks even more uncomfortable with being here than Anoelle does with her being from The Southlands and all. She is in nice linen that has a blend of something else and it’s simple and much like Lady Tatiana’s dress though less revealing and it’s in a shade of peach perhaps that does work well with her skin.

But she has that definite scared and awed outsider look going on even though she’s been here a while.

I’m used to this all in my own way but I’m not used to this from this perspective. Though honestly if I only really danced because I was ordered to as part of my duties as prince and a host home. If left to my own devices I would have been as bashful as some of the girls here and some of the boys and young men.

Kate, Tana and Anika are there and they’re acting like senior squires over us and they’ve done this enough that they’re past that first year’s shyness and they’re having a good time and some fellow comes over fast and he looks older and he asks Nicole to dance and she smiles and alights her hand to his then she dips a small curtsy to his fifth of a bow and they head out to dance.

I even see a couple of boys, squires, young men looking disappointed at not being able to dance with her and they’re eyeing me in consideration and that’s making me blush and I was considering joining Anoelle and Kari until one of those young me comes over and he offers his hand.

“Would you dance with me….?” His voice trails off as he’s waiting for my name.

I take a breath. I guess this is my coming out party as it were. “Princess Christiana Lyonnes.” I say it normally as I can and not with my nose in the air in fact I try and get it out as I take his hand and try and do that same sort of curtsey as Nicole did.

His eyes look filled with surprise at the title and then he’s smiling too because he just got a dance with a princess but I can see the clockworks moving in his head as he’s trying to place or figure out just who, what and where Lyonnes is.

He’s not the only one doing that.

Even the girls are doing that, the one’s I’m in classes with know about Aurora, Mother…Lady Blackhand but yes…this…this is definitely stepping out.

He recovers quickly enough to not be too interested over who I might be rather than dance with me and he leads me out to the dance floor and introduces himself.

“Squire Andarion Staed at your service Princess.”

“Please, this isn’t my court or home so it’s just Christiana.”

He gives me a nod bow to acknowledge that and we start to dance and it’s still very different than the dancing I know and what I learned on the way here as well. I’m not used to being partnered with a man leading and having to respond in a backwards fashion almost in some of the dance movements but it’s only some of them and there’s some parts of the dancing that are apart but facing each other and then others which is actually easier for me to do.

I’m just getting used to dancing with him after two rounds when I’m asked by an older man but not an old man and definitely a knight called Sir Robert of Glenning.

I’d say he’d be in his late twenties maybe thirty so not an old man but older. I do like his carefully trimmed beard it looks good on him and he’s raven haired as well so as they say…tall, dark and handsome.

Gods and Goddesses it’s beyond strange for me still to find myself liking things about men.

And to be truthful really with myself I’ll never be the same not after my time with Sir Alaan.

But Sir Robert was very nice to dance with as well as being easy on the eyes.

It’s a good dance with him and then another fellow and then another fellow and I’m trying to keep the names straight. As we do the introductions and all of the preamble. It’s that really that eats up the time honestly with the introductions and then back and forth and then getting to the actual dancing.

Still though the dancing hadn’t really stopped until a full glass had passed and by that time I’d danced with close to seven people and all things considered none of it was really bad. Though I’ve not too much experience to be a judge of good either. But I wasn’t touched in rude places and I hadn’t had my feet stepped on yet though I’m unsure that I could say that I didn’t miss a few steps.

But a princess even an unknown one is still a princess and you don’t mention things like that.

Though with the number of folks that were looking at me and talking to Lady Tatiana my story or what we’re talking of as my story might be getting put through the rounds.

I’m joined by Nicole as we’re heading back to high table at Lady Tatiana’s urging so that we’re not going to be in the way when the cook staff announces that the mains are going to be served.

She was busy dancing a bit too; she seems pretty popular with people as we’re heading back to the table. I can still sort of feel though our trip in our bones a little with a bit of tiredness creeping in and I think it’s the same with her because there’s that look in her eyes that she gets when she’s burning her candle too low.

“Are you okay?”

Nicole nods. “My first day back really the calisthenics were hard today as was pretty much everything else.”

“You should be taking it easier.” I actually help her to her seat next to mine, well not help but my old reactions come to the fore and I’m pulling out her chair and seating her.

Nicole looks at me slightly amused and raises one of her eyebrows.

I blush. “Sorry.”

One of the pages coughs and he seats me too along with the others and there’s fresh napkins brought out with fresh finger bowls and then the mains are coming out.

I say mains because it’s more than one dish and but there’s several and they repeat in sequence down the table in a floral shape of eight platters pointed inwards and there’s both meat dishes and there’s vegetables and other things. I wait and I watch and there’s the All-gods general prayer and then a thanks with that to the kitchen staff for their hard work all done by Lady Tatiana and then we start to eat.

It’s very self-service here to promote talking and passing things and the let one’s manners flow and the pages are just there to pour drinks that they have available and to provide new fingerbowls as well as bread and rolls.

The food is very good with…

Roasted goat and now kid either but definitely an older goat or goats and the gamey strength of the meat is nothing like I thought it would be as the are roasted off onions and small turnips that were roasted with it and the platters are amazing with the meat in various cuts and all those bits were made into meatballs and the roasted onions and small turnip are garnishing the plate with a sauce drizzled over it and there are artistic little sprinklings of different kinds of currants.

I can taste the prune too in the meat and wine so this might be where the starters were also cooked in.

Then there’s piled high platters of sausages and there are many varieties of them on the platters and they’re actually quite popular here with everyone. There’s one that is really mild and sweet and just plain good with what seems like not just the pork but maybe cooked rice and spices but also berries maybe and the ones I were eating were just redolent with cooked squash as well.

I’ve never had such a simple thing as a sausage have that kind of blending honestly with the squash and the pork meeting the spices and the little tangy-sweet of the berries and then there’s that meaty brown caramel flavor from the fried casing…and the different mustards and there’s this hot pot of a preserve that they call Saw-er that’s made from fermented cabbage and salt?

The dwarves even share their own Saw-er they brought or that Ale’ric brought to be more on point as he’s not from Sanctuary, but he’d from Asguard the home city of the Dwarves and he’s here as a guest.

Dwarven Saw-er is red cabbage and there’s garlic crushed into it and they added also a deep strong wine vinegar to it as well and it’s actually spiced in a sort of way with caraway seeds and lots of pepper corns and juniper berries.

It’s pungent and strong and powerful but it goes wonderfully in small amounts with the sausages but for me really well as a condiment to the goat.

Then there’s a platter of just potatoes and these are thin skinned white potatoes that are boiled until they can be pressed flat into a cake like shape but not smashed then they’re fried in fat and butter and set out here with salt and pepper and chopped herbage tossed over them.

Carrot and Beets and small yellow Squashes are cooked off and set in rows on the platters the carrots are large chunks whole and roasted and then glazed and spiced and are meaty and sweet. The beets are roasted and hollowed out and have a filling that is the center that was taken out and the beet greens along with diced up pickled beets for added flavor and to spice the dish. Thane the squash is opened at the top roasted but then it’s filled with this pudding? Well it’s not a pudding but it’s a dish of wild rice that is sticky from being stirred with pot barley and little bits of brown fried mushrooms.

Then there’s squabs all in piles on the platters and they’re roasted and glazed and stuffed with Silk Islander rice and dried apricots from the south and have these tiny little tasty seeds tossed over them to stick to the glaze called sesame.

It’s all so very, very good and it’s at the same time not quite what I expected from the sort of main course foods that I’d expect from a feast in a huge castle like this. Goat and older goat at that and squab aren’t exactly the opulent foods that I ate home or even more so when we went and visited nearby lands.

And there’s a lot of vegetables served too. Oh it’s fancy for true with all the stuffing and glazes and whatnot but Lady Tatiana is pretty frugal it seems.

It’s still miles past what some of the poor folks eat to be truthful and everything and I’m enjoying it especially the squab and the vegetables. I’ve taken a liking to them a whole lot more since my travels on the way here.

I’m eating and still following the lead of Lady Tatiana and Nicole with what to hold in this place and how to hold and eat some of the foods since it does seem to be different and I do notice that folks here at this table at least seem to have pretty big appetites.

The dwarves are very strong eaters and then there is Lady Tatiana who is surprising and not. I mean with her size I’d assume she’d be a big eater but at the same time from my experience women don’t eat large amounts in public.

I can remember my mother and sisters eating before a supper with guests in the kitchen so they looked like they were slight eaters.

Lady Tatiana however she eats and she doesn’t just eat but she spoons sauces from platters and uses bread to soak them up and she eats several small hand loaves with copious amounts of butter.

It’s also interesting to see the people ordering food down in the main floor used for supper for the guests and the tables that have been boughten and some folks are buying what they want and some folks are buying everything that we’re eating and drinking and it seems to be all at a cost like eating in a fancy inn or a tavern.

No wonder this is making money for her and there’s definitely some that look like they’re trying to get her notice by what they’re ordering and how much they’re ordering as well.

The conversations here are pretty interesting too.

I mean there’s taxes and crops and harvests as well as who is doing what in this part of the land or that part of the land and some things sound a little less than settled with some folks talking about this grudge bearing out and that grudge bearing out and fights over honor if you can call it that when some Lord is offering challenge in arms because their neighbor was having a good year and relaxed the rents making the first Lord look bad.

And that Ale’ric isn’t just a diplomat and I would have thought warrior with the physique and well most of the things that I’ve ever heard of dwarves but he’s not, he’s an engineering envoy here to help out with several projects here and to help with building more track and another Iron Rhino.

I have always found the building of things of really skillful things to be fascinating. Like generators and the secrets behind light glass for Illuminations and Battleknights and since I’ve seen them Iron Rhino’s the entire thing with them is exciting and powerful and honestly world changing things.

Then they serve us wine and cheese and then we’re to head back once more to the dancing hall while the chefs are preparing The Sweet.

Home and other places it’s called that or The Treat and it’s definitely a thing that everyone loves though I’ve been to a few places that was absolutely lavish with their confections.

And even if this is the cheese course it’s very surprisingly good with a few types and some of them are new or farm cheeses blended into being a sort of spread after being presses into a molded shape and then there’s a few of the regular rennet and formed almost wax like ones that are typically yellows or oranges and then there’s dwarven cheeses that are hard, hard like brick that need a sort of a pick knife to get at and are musty and nutty and very often salty.

Everyone seems to like the dwarven hard and salty cheese. Even I do because it crumbles as I chew it and it’s slightly overpowering and then with a sip of wine or a slice of fruit these flavors shift and change.

The dancing is a lot more spirited this time around and drink is flowing past what was served with the cheese and supper and people are full and happy with the younger folks like me dancing and being asked to dance and the older folks are drinking between what dance sets they like and are talking and talking and talking and I can almost see the wheels turning.

I do notice while some of the nobles not at High table are here and they paid for their seating and whatnot while the guildsmen and some of the tradesmen are her guests and did not have to pay.

That’s so not like home where the opposite would be true if happened at all. I’ve been to dinners where only the most powerful merchants like salt sellers and spice merchants and bankers were invited and everyone else was…well I don’t know but they weren’t with us.

I follow suit though and I dance with anyone and everyone who asks me and I use my powers a little to do my memory tricks as we talk and even if I’m not overly fond of them or had my feet stepped on I don’t slight anyone and I try to talk up they’re details like where they’re from and their trades and family things and I really, really try hard to find one good thing about them to commit to my magical memory.

And no they’re not all that bad but there’s some that are pretty bad at socializing like this and not all of them are the common folk that are here some of them are nobles and squires and pages.

Three times I had to remove hands from being overly familiar….that made me scared and embarrassed and angry all at the same time and the third time this Baronet Varian Hansling who was unrepentantly fresh with me despite being an older man and his touch was far too familiar and it might have been a mistake to do this but with Baronet Varian it wasn’t just the third time it was he was the third person.

He was touching my sides a little too close to places that you don’t…then when he settled his hands on my hips they strayed further down…too far down. And as I colored he tried to openly kiss me and I arced…a spark jumped from my to him knocking him flat on his bottom.

Everyone stopped and I had the urge to flee and the only thing that kept me there was Lady Tatiana shaking her head not to and then she straightened her back like she wanted me to stand tall.

I looked down at him and settled my hands to my hips and said out loud. “First those hands were up too close to things and then far too down for comfort and then whilst I’m shocked you make free to kiss me? Be happy I just stunned you baronet.”

He looked stunned and so did the rest of the dancers and he blushes a deep red and he scrambled to his feet and knelt. “Bear me no ill will sorceress I was enchanted by your beauty and couldn’t help myself.”

I look at him and my mouth twisted into a frowned pursing. “There was no enchantment on my part I assure you Baronet. It’s more than likely you’re used to maidens being in awe of you and accepting your advances.”

He nods. “Aye true, perhaps I shall curb my efforts then?”

“I’d think that every woman here might appreciate that Baronet.”

There are some very telling looks and nods and he’s seeing them too and I will give him this he’s taking it better than some might in the same situation.

I offer my hand and we exchange eye contact and for the love of the gods and goddesses he actually still had the mettle to wink at me and let me pull him off his kneeling position.

He bows to me in the way of starting another dance and he’s smiling and I roll my eyes. “You will never learn will you?”

“Oh aye I’ve learned it’s just I’m not one to stay on the ground when I get bucked off.”

“I’m not some horse to tame or ride.”

He just gives me this loaded look and a small little wry smile as I literally just marched into that innuendo. I color and he makes a gesture and the music starts up again and we start to dance.

Alright that’s brave and bizarrely charming and he’s not bad looking but the last thing I want or need is to get involved with anyone much less a man that is at least in his thirties.

But he is very charming, even with the burn that I gave him and the ruffling of his ego.

It could have gone a lot worse.

Actually it sort of still did after Baronet Varian and I danced.

Crandell Ormond and the two Martel boys were there and they showed zero hesitancy of their distaste of me and Crandell almost spat the word “Witch” as he passed me on the dance floor.

He gave me a look that was full of sneering dislike.

He even bumped me after the set that had us encounter each other in the first place. “You’re unnatural and you don’t belong here especially after that outburst.”

“Why because I scare you?”

“Know and learn your place wench.”

“I am, that’s why I’m here just like you.”

“Witch.”

“That’s princess and witch to you Crandell.”

He really glared at me then. “Bitch….someone will shut up that smart mouth of yours.”

“You could Crandell or are you scared?”

“You have magic, you’re a cheat.”

“That enrages you though doesn’t it? A woman with the power to say no and back that up.”

He turned a rageful red in the face before moving off.

I did take note though that he has an entourage of people here and not just his twin bully boys but there’s some others that seem determined to bum kiss with him and there’s several ladies there either looking at me with hate or they’re toadying up to him for various reasons I suppose.

Having met enough of them through Gracia’s inner circles at things that we went to I have a strong dislike for these types that just seen to have no line in what they’ll do or say or will take off of horrible people like Crandell just to get ahead.

It was all pretty horrible until Stormer asked me to dance.

Stormer from my classes and the page that had made his way up and out from Boot Town and who is very handsome and even moreso in his formal uniform for these functions and he asks me to dance and I couldn’t really say no.

Well I suppose I could have but I honestly didn’t want to.

Stormer is handsome in that broody way and I find myself for some reason attracted to that and the thought that he seemed to actually despite all of that attitude he actually seems to want to dance with me.

And he can dance too, it’s seriously nice and he’s a battleknighter candidate too which means he’s going through some serious and extreme training and it shows in how easy and fast he moves me on the dance floor.

I’m suddenly very aware of my girl heart and how much there’s just something innate there that is coming to the fore as he bends me and dips me or he’ll scoop and spin me. I’m small anyways but I feel absolutely tiny and waiflike and delicate when he does this in a way that has my brain just reacting…and it’s fun, it’s really fun and by the time I am done my hands have touched his body in places but not bad places but still…his chest, his arms are so very solid and he has this…just this thing about him that has me trembling inside in a scary and terrifying good way.

Like it was with Sir Alaan but differently.

I don’t really know Stormer at all but part of me is seriously attracted to him.

He thanked me for the dance but I have just the feeling he wasn’t all that interested in me in that way.

Which I can respect but at the same time…ow…but that ow was instructive. I didn’t know that being a woman meant that you can want to be with someone and not have any serious feelings. That you can just be as randy as any lad can be.

There’s another bit of Oh about being a woman that I had zero clue of.

Not that I’m going to go and bed someone.

And not long after that came The Sweet.

Well it’s several things actually and it’s served in the other hall and we take to the tables as there’s kaffet served or coffee some call it and there’s a hot date drink that’s made into this sweet broth with spices added and all the skins and pits removed and then there’s tea and hot ciders but the sweets are very good.

Some fried sweet dough squares that are like fluffy clouds and covered with powdered sugar which is white as snow and fascinates me having never seen it. I ate three of those my body suddenly aware of sweets and then there’s several puddings that are baked cones of a sweet heavy cake that was made with suet and there’s dates and figs and prunes in some and then there’s a sauce that sinks into it to the point of drowning and then there’s a lemon one that has many, many lemons baked inside that boiled out their juices and so much sugar in that it counters it really nicely and it sort of makes your mouth water from the tang and the sweet of it all and there’s pies too.

Small pies in dishes just right for one person and there’s dried apricot with kumquats and cooked low and thick and then a minced meat one that has this heady flavor and is just filled with citrus peels and other fruits and there’s a definite meatiness to and apple as well as pear and plum.

Nicole and Tana and Anika and I get several pies and share forkfuls of them so we can taste them all without eating one each and I’m well and truly stuffed by the time we’re done and then there’s us breaking up as the party and meal is all done with and it’s the ninth glass by the time that I’m done.

Lady Tatiana comes to me as the breaking up starts and she says. “Go get changed and wait for me in my office it’ll be soon time for your other lessons.”

“Other lessons?”

“Magic.”

“Oh…you can do that?”

“Aye, I knew your mother well enough and helped her with enough things that I will be teaching ye.”

I make my way to the office and where the other clothes are and there’s fresh kaffet there too and I get undressed from my finery and wash my face off and I feel better and less made-up like some fictional version of myself and the clothes too.

Sigh….I know I’ll have to get used to them but all the same I’m pretty far from all of that. It’s a relief to be just plain Chrissy.

I pour myself a kaffet and I’m waiting until lady Tatiana comes in and she has already showered and changed into some simple loose pants with a drawstring and a loose top that she still makes look ridiculously good and she pours herself a kaffet and she takes a sip.

“A’right now tell me what y’ken do.”

“Pardon?”

“What have ye mastered?”

I go over each thing and she stops me as I’m describing each thing and she gets me to show her when I can and even sometimes when I can she still wants me to actually do it and her eyes…her eyes bet to be this brighter silver?

“You can see things like me?”

“No, but I have my own version of what you do and mine is closer to true magic.”

“True magic?”

“Aye, you’re not a mage of any kind yet Christiana you’re an adept like yer mother.”

“An adept?”

“Part mage.”

“Part mage?”

She looks at me and drinks her kaffet down. “Aye you have an affinity for lightning it’s in yer blood and that’s a talent like any other and it’s only accessible through having magic.”

“Okay…I don’t understand.”

She sits on the couch in her office. “You have a talent for lightning, it’s part of your bloodline and it’s a powerful thing and to me able to do anything with it you must use magic to make it work. True magic is using the energies that let you manipulate the lightning inside you and around you for other things.”

“Did my mother know how to do this?”

“Aye and it took her a lot to learn these things as she didn’t exactly have a dearth of teachers when she was coming to her power. You have the advantage of what she learned and what I learned with her and taught her too.”

“You taught her?”

“Aye…I have magic of me own and it’s specific to me just like a lot of the other races. Most humans have very little true magic in them and women tend to be the strongest and the strongest of those are adepts like you.”

“There’s more than just me?”

“Oh aye, there are but it’s still rare for humans.”

“For humans?”

“Aye folk like me and the other races we have our own, some for what we are and some past that.”

“Are you a mage or witch or sorceress?”

“Nay, I’ma paladin.”

“Paladins are just tales.”

“Nay we’re real and we’re what you’d call physical adepts.”

“Physical adepts?”

“Strength, speed, endurance it’s all subjective to our magic as well as a few other things that have developed into the lore.”

I’m looking at her. “I had no idea that things like this even existed?”

“Likely not Aurora never had the chance to school you in this.”

I’m nodding and I get another drink and I sit and think and she’s quiet drinking her own drink and she’s getting some books down from her impressive library behind her desk and I look at her.

“So how do I learn real magic?”

“Right now through my knowledge of the lore and some of the basics as I know them and we’ll take it from there.”

I take a deep breath and a drink after that and she sits and she leans forward to look at me. “Do the sight trick that you showed me, the one that lets you see in the dark.”

It takes me a second and another few for my eyes to adjust to the sort of strange greyed out look of everything except for the energies in the room. The electric in the walls and the way that the lights look in this sort of strange prismatic fuzzy dandelion headed way.

And then there’s Lady Tatiana who is starting to change from the greyed out version of herself into being this woman that’s filled full of light? It’s all blue and white and she’s…she’s holding back but I’m staring at her.

“You’re glowing?”

“Aye I’m releasing power.”

“I can see you glowing.”

She chuckles. “Aye like I said I’m releasing power through my body what you’re seeing is the energies of my flesh reacting to my magic.”

“You’re boosting everything?”

“Oh nay, this is something sort of easy for you to see I reckon iffa ye could see it and now that I know that ye can that gives me answers as how to start.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She tones down her power flowing through her even more so it’s just her sort of shimmering shitting and leaning forwards towards me on her big comfy study chair.

She points to my hand. “Bring yer hand up and arc some electric between yer fingers.”

I lift my hand and make my basic light arc. “Okay done now what?”

“I need ye to look at it, look at the electric itself and where it’s coursing through ye and to find the point where the energy that you sort of see in me meets the electric.”

Oh that was so easier said than done.

It’s so much like smithing where you have to bank and shape the coals to get this cone of flame and know where the blue becomes the reds and the other hues. Only it’s trying to find that exact line of where those colors meet while the flame is flickering.

It’s hard on the neck and it’s hard on the eyes and I lose myself in sitting there until Lady Tatiana shakes me out of it.

“Yes Lady?” I’m blinking the spots out of my eyes and I’m seeing flecks of colors like looking at a bright illumination bulb too long. I have a headache and I feel tired.

“We’re done for the night, it’s late and we both have things to do tomorrow. We’ll continue this after High table tomorrow eve.”

She helps me to the door and she gives me a cookie to munch on for my trip to my bed with the other pages and it takes a lot of will to get undressed even as I am and brush my teeth.

I dream very little and it’s some of the attack and that’s swimming with the fighting I’ve been through and then the woman’s mark moments of horror and blood so much blood and cramps and then there’s the meal and really meeting dwarves and then the others all those others and then staring into the light of my own arc light.

All of it fast and in flashes and snippets and a lot of it blurry.

I get woken up by the other girls when it’s time to get started and my head is pounding and pounding and I’m dry and crampy and when I move my sheets it looks like someone skinned a rabbit in them.

Which pushed on the nausea that I didn’t know that I had until I moved and then I ended up in the jakes trying to gag up nothing and just feeling horrible.

I get cleaned up and I’m drinking a herb and willow bark infusion that one of the girls made and it’s cold and bitter and just this side of vile but after a shower and getting cleaned up and into more sanitary gear and fresh clothes I feel human again.

Not really better but human again.

Then it’s off to the kitchens again.

Sergeant Caldwell is running it tight as it was before and it’s hard work and it’s hot work and at the same time I’m learning things why this goes into that what you save this for and that for and why this reacts this way.

Mind you he says it all as he’s informing you like you should already know this and there’s this very succinct feeling that is he bellows a lecture that you had best remember it.

It’s odd though he screams at everyone and at no one in particular. You mess up he checks almost kindly to see if you’re alright and then he gives you extra work usually cleaning and scrubbing things or dishes and then he will launch into a tirade lecture about what one should not do.

Then it’s more drills under that evil southlander man Corporal Crowe and his bully boys he employs and if he’s literally not running us ragged then it’s sparring and us getting literally bounced around the practice courts as we spar over and over then it weapons drills and some more sparing.

The weapons are actually out of all of the things I do until past lunch that I’m remotely good at

After we serve and have our lunches then it’s classes.

And the rest of the week goes like that…Chores, training, classes and some of those vary with my Dwarven classes getting switched to Southlander for the last two days of the week and the classes of the fourth glass of the afternoon keep changing so in some respects we’re learning things at an expanded fashion.

Writing and Literature, Agriculture, Games and Strategy, Logistics and Supply, Economics and trade.

And of course there’s always debates in those classes like Games and Strategy which I’m admittedly only passably good at to my chagrin with some of the boys being raised into warfare more than I had been and then there’s interesting things like. Economics and trade which has Crandell and his cronies always saying something and begrudging things to the common folk.

It annoys me that they think the common folk as lazy and listless and cheats. It annoys them that according to Lady Tatiana’s laws that if a tax is deemed unjust that the commoners no matter what realm in The West can send their displeasure through the post riders to her and she will review them.

This of course really doesn’t sit well with Crandell and the Martell brothers and some of the others that think that she oversteps her authority and their noble rights. And this in the realms when it cannot be reached in an accord in the legal courts becomes an issue of challenge.

Which further frustrates the hells out of them since a win in the challenge courts strikes out the vote of the loser.

And then of course there’s the fact that Lady Tatiana has never been beaten.

And that might be cheating if they found out she had the powers that she does but it’s not just her winning the challenges. In fact according to our teachers when we’re talking about it all that, that she almost never accepts challenges and she only fights in wars and her jobs.

But she’s one enough and she’s made a lot of the realms prosper under her hand that she’s rarely challenged anymore even if it’s not her fighting.

But I’m learning that there’s a definite entitled and shady side when it comes to this here like everywhere else.

And these same arses…yes I’m using that language are the ones that try and give all of us women and girls here a hard time in classes and in the daily training like they’re trying to shown that they’re better men than us and that women don’t have the same place and don’t deserve the same place either.

I enjoy it when I’m able to win against Crandell and his friends with some of the weapons training.

All the different fourth glass classes get switched usually daily and then the hour of free time before supper becomes time for me to either nap a little or try and go to the fortress library and find books on the subjects of my lessons.
Then it’s High Table where it’s becoming other real life lessons in food, conversation and also business with the Steam Road being a big conversation piece and just the road along will take massive amounts of crushed stone, timbers, steel and dwarven concrete as well as foresters and loggers as well as rangers to over sea that and other folks and all of the spin off from that and then there are so many people that want something to do with this, to get a piece of this.

And then there’s getting to know folks in the dancing and the eating and knowing about food and wine and while I get it I do I’m watching Nicole and Lady Tatiana and they know so much.

I’m using my powers a lot to catch up and that’s a definite advantage with names and keeping track of events in the city and with the various courtiers.

And despite the hard work I’m starting too really like it here.

The girls in the dorms are fun and different and friendly usually though the older year pages and some of the squires are aloof in that sort of senior way and they’re busy too so much of the time and then life of a squire here is a hard one it seems as arms practice and all these other skills they’re being taught leave them tired and very much bruised.

And three days after I took the Moonsilver I was recovered and better and that helped things a lot and my recovery seemed to irritate some folks since it was fast and then there’s then few men like Crandell that gets both red faced in embarrassment when women speak of that sort of thing around him and the Martell’s especially Bennet is quite vocal about the potion being an affront to men and that a man has a right to spread his seed and have a woman bear his sons.

That didn’t bear him well at the dancing except in his own circles where the girls there seem so much like the noble girls home…not my sisters or mothers but there’s always those that just agree with whatever a man says and only says something when it’s time to support their favorite.

The same day my bleeding stopped was the same day that I finally seem my raw magic.

It’s this little bit of quicksilver looking light that moves as I direct it…sort of.

My next lesson was to see it and just move it through my hands without using my electrical powers…or talents.

And then next it was pushing it out of my body, out through my fingers.

And pushing it out into a large wooden pan of water.

I look at Lady Tatiana. “Why am I doing this?”

She explains while reading from something else. “True magic is a thing of a complex nature but one of the things that it is attracted to is things of a complex and simple nature. It likes to hide there, live there and settle in these places.”

“In water?”

“No, it the threshold of the water and the air and the container, it will abide in the force of the surface tension of the water.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know Chrissy it just as I said likes things like that. In rainbows and gems and prisms and crystals in things like reflective surfaces, or in words and shapes.”

“Words as like in spells?”

“Aye, from what I know of that part of things true magic has been used for so long by the Elder races and those even more ancient than they that certain mystical effects have their own unique description in a language that is called the first language, it’s like there is so much faith and belief in these words that the soul-force of that belief shapes the magics to that effect.”

“Oh…do you know spells?”

“Nay, not truly my magic doesn’t truly pass from my own skin being as what it is and what I am. But your mother has grimoires and codex’s that do and she told me once that it’s like trying to pour her power into a word that doesn’t want to be defined so it’s akin to breaking a horse with just words and not yer hands.”

“Oh I take it that I’m not ready for that?”

“Not by half lass, not even by a hundredth right now.”

“So why am I infusing the water’s surface tension? With power?”

“Because it will allow ye to look into it and see yer own power reflected in that all through your body and that will let you move it through more than just your hands and then contain it?”

“Contain it, why?”

“Because it builds force, it concentrates your power and it makes your control stronger. It’s much akin to weaving fibers together for better use like yarns or ropes or fabric. It’s more useful to you with more control and that control will keep ye from sparkin all over the place.”

I nod, not that long ago that wouldn’t have made one bit of sense to me but now I can admit that I need the control and that if I can control my magic better than I can use my lightning better and with more control than what I have now.

It took a few tries before I could send the magic and the magic alone into the surface but not the actual surface of the water. It’s actually putting magic into the force that is surface tension and it’s just some scholarly abstract thing….but doing this I can feel it.

And it’s fascinating, and then when I coat the surface with power and shift my sight I can see the quicksilver of my magic inside of me.

It takes me late into the night to actually move it and to actually sort of get it into a sort of semi nebulous cloud in the center of my chest.

Lady Tatiana shows me hers and it’s like a small globe, it’s a sphere and as long as she shows it to me and it actually rotates moves inside of her and it doesn’t look like much until you really, really look and again it’s only because she lets me see it but it’s deep, deep and so many layers inside of herself and there’s letters in there and shapes and just so many things looking at it too long actually hurts my eyes and I had to stop.

I slept so hard that night.

And then it was weeks end.

Two free days for the pages and I was planning on sleeping and maybe even going into the city with some of the girls and maybe looking up Jessa and Nicole.

Lady Tatiana summoned me to break my fast with her and Nicole is there as well as some others like Stormer and another called Kestrel and another called Lane as well as Taylor and Jessa and Corporal Crowe and we eat a light breakfast and my day starts with those of Lady Tatiana’s squires and they’re battleknighter squires at that…and well Jessa and Taylor.

Jessa is skilled and she is in advanced training with her sword and knives and Taylor for all being a keep-born child he’s a barracks rat and he’s held blades and trained with folk here as soon as he could really. He might not have the titles and such but he could, he very easily could.

And I think that that’s the point.

My sixthday becomes a day of personal instruction with Lady Tatiana running training drills for us and working out drills and for me she’s telling me, teaching me how to use my lighting inside of my body…how nerves carry lightning and how muscles move because of lightning and then after an hour of just getting the very basics down for me to move faster and to be stronger she throws me in deep and has me use these new things to work harder and faster and to keep up with the rest of them.

Train, run, exercises, lifts and all those things that she makes her own do and pushes them to do she has me do. There are small breaks for water and for food with some drink…if you can call it that of some kind of silk islander rotten bean stuff and pureed vegetables and ice… I have no idea how the squires and the page prospects can drink this but I’m barely able to choke the stuff down.

Then some honey with herbs that will make us healthier or at least are medicinals. Then some kind of dwarven mushroom powder that we take in carefully measured spoonfuls that makes my heart race and fills me with so much energy that I can’t stand still….it makes me want to pee a lot though.

But it’s like drinking a whole lot of kaffet with a lot of sugar.

All day, it’s all day and it goes from conditioning to hand to hand learning including boxing and some wrestling and something that is full on knight’s based unarmed combat that she’s teaching and the Corporal assists in as a sparring partner and a second instructor and then after lunch…after lunch which was more mushroom powder and more of the drink but lots of meat and well everything and then…then it’s something that actually makes me tear up and cry.

Happy tears, happy excited almost breathless tears and that’s when we’re lead to a row of Squire’sknights and we start to train in them.

I’ve used Nicole’s rig before this so I’m used to these training ones but it’s still really wonderful to see them here for us. I have dreamed a lot of my old life of doing this…My father was a Battleknighter; My Oldest Brother was a Battleknighter.

For my older if father had passed he could have taken The Rampant and then passed his rig which was called The Hamish to Stephan I still would have been more than likely not running a rig unless Stephan or Justin married into a house that needed a Battleknighter and a male heir.

Not very likely but I still dreamed of things like that.

And now getting to do this was very much a dream for me especially compared to playing around with Nicole’s Squire’sknight.

Oh it’s walking around at first and getting used to them for me and the other candidates and I’m getting looks since I’m a sorceress and all of that but Stormer and Kestrel and Lane all say nothing about it and it doesn’t take too long before we’re doing light walk-jogs across the training yard and then a break.

Then it’s walking around an obstacle course just walking and maneuvering and then after some more time a break.

Then there’s using the swords and the shields and doing some very basic moves and destroying striking posts and splitting blocks and that’s not easy you have to know how to swing the sword while in the rig and then you have to know have to hold the sword for the different strokes and it’s real skill based training. And they want you to move in the squire’sknight while you do it, just like in the same kind of training with pell posts they want you to move.

And you…I sweat so much and burn through so much energy that you’re drenched and even with all of the food and stim and drink you still feel it.

And then we’re done…Not just a break but done for the day and after we clean our practice rigs and tune them and oil them after we get them seated and that includes cleaning the shields and sharpening the swords.

Well it’s pretty much time for evening meal or close to that and I’m excited, still sort of high really from the stimulants and the excitement and getting to do this finally otherwise I’d be exhausted.

It’s a bit of a walk back to the barracks quarters and I’m feeling both light as air from not having to move all of that weight and I’m feeling rubbery at the same time and I’m still smiling and a little dazed as I get to get cleaned up in the showers.

I am starting to love a shower. It’s dwarven and sound engineering with pipes and all sort of thing but there’s hot water that you can adjust by just turning a handle and then there’s all the soaps and the sponges and cloths.

I don’t mind baths but there’s a certain feeling to having it all sloughed off and then washed away. I don’t mean to be finicky sounding but there’s something nice to literally being clean enough your finger sort of squeaks on your skin.

Nicole and Jessa both are waiting for me in the common area with the sinks and the counter with the mirrors when I come out and I’m drying off and they both look like they’re cleaned up and Nicole’s in a dress with vest and jacket with a hood and her weapons belt on over the dress and Jessa in in flared black trousers and a nice button up shirt with fanciful embroidery that looks Chaikanese in design and her ranging jacket and she has her weapons on with her as well.

I smile that they’re here. I mean I have been in Nicole’s company during parts of the week but I haven’t really had the same time as before all of this with her and even moreso with Jessa.

“You two look good.”

Jessa smiles. “Thanks’ we’re all on liberty the rest of the night and tomorrow so we came by to see if you wanted to go out.”

I nod. “That, that sounds like just the thing.” Okay I am smiling a lot more too since when I was home we never really did that. One, we lived in the castle and we were away from town. Not too far but it was far enough that you had to have a reason to go.

And two when you lived in the castle people usually came to you.

And then there was the age thing. My brothers were older than I was and that afforded both of them liberties like being able to leave and to do things.

“Will we be having chaperones?”

Both the girls laughed and Nicole shook her head. “No, we’re freewomen we don’t need chaperones and the like unless we were going to someplace fancy and important and then it’d likely be having a date.”

I blush a little at the thought of having a date.

Jessa grins. “We got paid so we thought to come and get you and hit some of the shops and carouse a little and show you the city.”

“Let me get dressed!”

They laugh and I look through my things and I settle on some of my nicer underthings and a simple farmers blouse but with my coat over it and a nice skirt that I have that has pockets and I put on my belt and the pouches with my ingots of iron in it and my knife and for the monies I have from our journey here I have those in smaller separate pouches and in a leather shoulder bag.
I leave my hair loose after running a comb through it and with a little power and a twist of my comb I make this wave that goes over one side of my face and it looks good but it stays out of my eyes.

Nicole takes us past to the bursars office and I have some pay there.

Which was actually unexpected and it was really nice and I actually leave some of the “found” coin with her and I get myself a decent brace of the local coin mostly in coppers and a silver pennies at Nicole’s suggestion and I leave a respectable amount in my holdings there.

I’m far from rich really but I have some monies, some.

It’s a weight off my mind that I didn’t know was there.

We leave together heading out with some others who are on liberty tonight too and we share a wagon ride from the gates into the city and one of the places where people are getting dropped off and I can’t help but to be excited and to smile with all of the folk around and shops and things are lit with electric illuminations and it’s busy and exciting.

Nicole tugs on my sleeve and we’re heading first thing for some confection shop.