Pela already missed the lush rainforest of her home in southern Aldeph. The air of Galena tasted like sulfur and ash to a palate used to the sun and salt of the ocean. Don't be thrums, she mentally scolded herself. Think of this as the grand responsibility it is. Appreciate your good fortune! At least it isn't somewhere frigid...
So Pela affixed a smile on her face and smoothed her skirts, her bangles and beads clicking softly against one another with the motion. She'd worn her best attire, but next to the nobles' finery it still looked inadequate and simplistic. She pretended not to overhear the term provincial tittered about as a few of them passed by.
Her fingertips itched, fleetingly tempted to call up a ward line at perfect tripping height in front of the feet belonging to that snooty voice. But she kept her hands still. Causing a ruckus here and now wouldn't get her sent back to Aldeph, it would probably get her sent to the dungeon. Pela could only hope against all evidence that the Crown merely needed a temporary ward-witch, and not a permanent position to be filled.
The door down the hall opened, and Pela stood from the bench quickly, giving her layered skirts a hurried brush down.
Nausicaa once looked forward to becoming queen. She'd wanted to make her family proud, especially her father. And she'd been smitten with the boy-king who had been her friend and later her lover.
Now, barely even a year since her coronation, she just felt trapped.
Uriel wasn't the problem. His uncle was. Uriel listened to him more than he listened to her, and she couldn't even bring the matter up without being told she was close-minded and unreasonable. "I know he's your father's political rival," Uriel would tell her. "But you have to learn to see beyond that, Nausicaa. He's your family now, too."
Things grew worse when months passed and she remained without child. She was confined to the rooms of the palace, leaving only when her presence was required or when she had to appear at some political function. Even seeing to her dragon, Inanna, was no longer a freedom she had. Coupled with the pressure to produce an heir, she'd grown miserable and angry, and because she could not always take it out on her husband and her husband's uncle, she occasionally took it out on the people around her.
That was what the handmaiden who came to collect Pela warned her about in a hushed voice. "The queen is in a foul mood today." She shared a look with the guard standing by the door, a weary-looking old man who appeared long overdue for retirement, and the look practically said it wasn't only today that the queen was in a foul mood. "Good luck."
Inside her study, Nausicaa waited by the large window, her back to the door as she was momentarily distracted by the view of dragons flying around the city. But it only made her angry.
She pulled the curtain back hard and, scowling, turned to face her guest.
Pela had never met the current king Uriel, and only seen his father from afar. As magifolk were long-lived, Pela's oath to the Crown had actually been given to his grandfather, Velibor. But kingdom policies what they were, her allegiance was obliged forward down the royal line on pain of treason. She hadn't mourned Velibor's death by any means, and while she hadn't minded Uriel I in general, the about-face from Velibor's reign had been hard on the kingdom.
These days it felt like almost everything was hard on the kingdom.
"Thank you," Pela murmured to the handmaiden, appreciative of the advance warning and thinking that, despite the unpleasant need for it, at least the palace staff seemed willing to look out for one another. She nodded as she passed the door guard. Entering the study, Pela dipped into a polite bow as her time in Eslistan Court — the formal institution responsible for the registration and training of all magifolk — had drummed into her.
"That I am, Your Grace. My fealty to you and yours unbroken and consummate," Pela replied, reciting the traditional Eslistan oath dutifully before straightening up once more. "How many I serve the Crown?"
The oath only made Nausicaa more irritable, as it reminded her of her own oath to the Crown. These days she found herself wondering more and more what her life would have been like had Uriel chosen someone else to wed. Perhaps she'd still be in the bottom ranks of their dragon-based cavalry, her lineage meaning nothing—
You wanted this, she reminded herself bitterly.
So she swallowed back the words that had been at the tip of her tongue, and nodded at Pela. The girl did not deserve being treated the way she had. None of her staff did.
"There are rumors of unrest from the north." The peace treaty brokered by Uriel's father between their kingdom and Chrysocolla had been a fragile one from the very beginning. The Galenaeans did not trust magifolk — except, strangely enough, dragons and ward-witches. It was only a matter of time before the alliance would fall apart, though Uriel did not want them to be the one to break it. "The king wishes to be assured that the wards in the palace are still in place."
Pela felt herself relax just a fraction. It was a truly mundane request for a ward-witch, and she thought perhaps she'd over-worried herself for no reason.
Still, it was a long way to send for someone just to check existing wards... surely there had to have been another ward-witch between Aldeph and here? It was true that magifolk were rarer now than they had been in the past, but they were hardly extinct.
"I can most certainly do that, Your Grace," she replied. "Does your Marshal have an accurate listing of the wards which have previously been enacted? If not, they can still be located and checked, and recast if need be, but it will make the process faster. If I might ask, who is the ward-witch who placed them? Are they not able to renew them?"
Nausicaa's gaze flickered to the wall on Pela's right, specifically toward a family portrait. But it was not her own.
"The late queen." Uriel's mother, a scholar from Chrysocolla, had been especially talented. But the fact that she'd reworked the wards in the palace after she'd moved in had become a cause of worry for some of Uriel's advisers, particularly his uncle, in the light of the recent reports. "The... king," she pauses, because what she really wished to say but could not was the king's uncle, "wants to be certain we have not been compromised."
The words tasted like ash in her mouth. Uriel's mother had died from the Plague, yet here she was, parroting the words of the man she hated the most in the kingdom, as if the former queen had been a traitor.
"May her Kin receive her," she said automatically, at mention of the queen's passing. Pela was definitely getting the sense of what the handmaiden had meant, where the young queen seemed to be a prickly sort over what Pela would have assumed were fairly mundane questions for a ward-witch in her position to be asking.
But then, this kingdom had never loved magifolk. Even the types that were highly sought after in other kingdoms, like spellcarvers and vesselies seemed like they were barely called upon in Galenaea... at least in public. In private, who knew? Magifolk who had a good thing going rarely bragged about it; the thought that any of them could be replaced by someone more talented, more inventive, more loyal.
Pela got the sense she'd be walking on glass around Nausicaa, but she wouldn't let that intimidate her. Her work was solid, and she had done nothing wrong, nothing that could be seen as compromising her loyalty. The ward-witch offered a smile of confidence and obedience.
"It's never a bad thing to have them checked periodically anyway," she assured, hoping to smooth over the obviously sensitive subject. "I'll get started right away. Ahh... in the unexpected chance that I do find any irregularities... how should they be reported, Your Grace?"
Bring them straight to Nausicaa? To the King directly? Ignore them? (She hoped not, that was a tangle she didn't want to be involved in.)
The question made Nausicaa pause for a moment. Historically, the King himself dealt with the ward-witches — and any other magifolk the kingdom secretly employed. She was only here, in fact, because Pela had arrived a little earlier than expected, with the King still on his way back from the Crown's routine check of the mines.
She was only supposed to give the ward-witch her orders and get her settled in the palace. But an opportunity had presented itself, and it was the most excitement the young queen had in months.
"You can report to me directly." Can. Damn, she should've used a more definitive word. "While the King has yet to return," she amended, which didn't really make it so much better. She would just have to act fast and seize the moment. "Do you mind if I watch you work? Just... for a while." Her formal countenance faded a little as her curiosity seeped through. "I have never seen a ward-witch at work before."
"Understood," Pela answered in regards to the reporting instruction.
The fact that Nausicaa's desire to watch her work was phrased as a request when an order would have been more expected, was more surprising than the actual asking. Some magi's enactments were subtle, even invisible. Wards were bright, colourful, flashy things unless specifically made to be invisible. Pela rarely had call to make hers hidden, and she was used to the people of her town watch and talk with her while she worked.
Still... Pela wasn't fool enough to think that phrasing aside, declining was a feasible response.
"Of course, Your Grace, I don't mind at all. I will be working in counterclockwise pattern, beginning from the southern side of the palace and spiraling inward. The exterior wards will be different than the exterior wards, which will be done clockwise from the north."
As Pela began to explain how she was going to go about her work, Nausicaa rummaged through the pile of papers on her study's desk. Finding nothing else demanding her immediate attention, she stepped around the table to move closer to the ward-witch. The motion revealed that she was not actually wearing a dress, but rather some sort of jumpsuit; though a queen, she was also a dragonrider and the daughter of a military commander, so she was more practical than most noble ladies.
And perhaps also more skeptical about magic.
"Why is that?" she inquires. "What happens if the pattern is disrupted?"
Part of Pela wonders if this is some kind of oddly phrased test, which half makes sense in that fairly, they don't know her. But the Eslistan Court would have vouched for her, since it was their own reputation on the line, so it shouldn't have been that. Or perhaps Pela was just absurdly overthinking the point, and chose instead to focus on answering the queen's question.
"Ward magic, like many schools of magics, draws its stability from stars," Pela explained as she tapped a small charm on her bracelet, a glass bead with a quadrille of arrows carved into it; one glowed, and she oriented herself to lead Nausicaa southward through the halls. Were she outside, she could have discerned south in a heartbeat, but the stone corridors of the palace had her directional sense muted.
"And ward magic is a forward-draw magic. That is, the energy to cast a ward is mustered when the ward is set, not when it is activated or expended. That's why wards can outline their casters," she said, bringing the explanation to the former Queen. Pela touched one side of the hall and under her hand, a curious swirl of energies lit up against the stone, moving like flowing water, leading them onward.
"But because it's a forward-draw magic, the scale and scope of a ward is limited by its caster's energy capacity. Skill and training can help, of course. They reinforce how one's body handles that draw. But to try and cast a single ward over an area the size of the palace for example, would cause such enormous drain that it would likely kill its caster, no matter how practiced they were. Which is why ward-witches create warding chains."
She touches the side of the corridor again, and this time the flowing swirls of light are tangled, looping over and over one another. "Here, see Your Grace? This is where two wards have been joined together, we call this a Ward Knot. So you can cover a much larger area by daisy chaining wards together like this, and it has the added benefit where if one ward were to fail, it would not compromise the entire structure."
Nausicaa expected to feel frustration at her lack of magic knowledge, but what she found bubbling inside her instead was excitement. Pela's willingness to share what she knew helped, too. The young queen might not be able to digest everything at once, but she'd be walking away with new learnings. Magic drawn from the stars. Why wards could survive even if their casters did not. Linking wards together to make them stronger and cover a larger area.
But one piece of information struck her the most: To try and cast a single ward over an area the size of the palace, for example, would cause such an enormous drain that it would likely kill its caster, no matter how practiced they were.
She'd always suspected that Uriel's mother hadn't really died from the Plague. Before today, she'd believed it was a covered up assassination. But here was another angle now. Though if the late queen did die from reworking the palace wards, why did she decide to do that in the first place? Had she discovered something in Galenaea that made it necessary? Did she know, as someone originally from Chrysocolla, that there would be unrest and the threat of war in their future?
She watched the flowing swirls of light with fascination, suddenly seeming a couple of years younger than she initially appeared. This was who she'd been, back in the day, before the burden of the Crown. She'd wanted to see the world, ask all the questions, learn about everything she could.
"How long will it take for you to cover the entire palace?" Realizing she might sound impatient instead of thrilled, she quickly added, "I do not wish for you to overexert yourself. We can accommodate you for as long as you need... though the Council, I suppose, will wish for you to hurry." She did not sound pleased by that, but she would deal with the lords herself then.
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for @consortia
So Pela affixed a smile on her face and smoothed her skirts, her bangles and beads clicking softly against one another with the motion. She'd worn her best attire, but next to the nobles' finery it still looked inadequate and simplistic. She pretended not to overhear the term provincial tittered about as a few of them passed by.
Her fingertips itched, fleetingly tempted to call up a ward line at perfect tripping height in front of the feet belonging to that snooty voice. But she kept her hands still. Causing a ruckus here and now wouldn't get her sent back to Aldeph, it would probably get her sent to the dungeon. Pela could only hope against all evidence that the Crown merely needed a temporary ward-witch, and not a permanent position to be filled.
The door down the hall opened, and Pela stood from the bench quickly, giving her layered skirts a hurried brush down.
no subject
Now, barely even a year since her coronation, she just felt trapped.
Uriel wasn't the problem. His uncle was. Uriel listened to him more than he listened to her, and she couldn't even bring the matter up without being told she was close-minded and unreasonable. "I know he's your father's political rival," Uriel would tell her. "But you have to learn to see beyond that, Nausicaa. He's your family now, too."
Things grew worse when months passed and she remained without child. She was confined to the rooms of the palace, leaving only when her presence was required or when she had to appear at some political function. Even seeing to her dragon, Inanna, was no longer a freedom she had. Coupled with the pressure to produce an heir, she'd grown miserable and angry, and because she could not always take it out on her husband and her husband's uncle, she occasionally took it out on the people around her.
That was what the handmaiden who came to collect Pela warned her about in a hushed voice. "The queen is in a foul mood today." She shared a look with the guard standing by the door, a weary-looking old man who appeared long overdue for retirement, and the look practically said it wasn't only today that the queen was in a foul mood. "Good luck."
Inside her study, Nausicaa waited by the large window, her back to the door as she was momentarily distracted by the view of dragons flying around the city. But it only made her angry.
She pulled the curtain back hard and, scowling, turned to face her guest.
"You are the ward-witch?"
no subject
These days it felt like almost everything was hard on the kingdom.
"Thank you," Pela murmured to the handmaiden, appreciative of the advance warning and thinking that, despite the unpleasant need for it, at least the palace staff seemed willing to look out for one another. She nodded as she passed the door guard. Entering the study, Pela dipped into a polite bow as her time in Eslistan Court — the formal institution responsible for the registration and training of all magifolk — had drummed into her.
"That I am, Your Grace. My fealty to you and yours unbroken and consummate," Pela replied, reciting the traditional Eslistan oath dutifully before straightening up once more. "How many I serve the Crown?"
no subject
You wanted this, she reminded herself bitterly.
So she swallowed back the words that had been at the tip of her tongue, and nodded at Pela. The girl did not deserve being treated the way she had. None of her staff did.
"There are rumors of unrest from the north." The peace treaty brokered by Uriel's father between their kingdom and Chrysocolla had been a fragile one from the very beginning. The Galenaeans did not trust magifolk — except, strangely enough, dragons and ward-witches. It was only a matter of time before the alliance would fall apart, though Uriel did not want them to be the one to break it. "The king wishes to be assured that the wards in the palace are still in place."
no subject
Still, it was a long way to send for someone just to check existing wards... surely there had to have been another ward-witch between Aldeph and here? It was true that magifolk were rarer now than they had been in the past, but they were hardly extinct.
"I can most certainly do that, Your Grace," she replied. "Does your Marshal have an accurate listing of the wards which have previously been enacted? If not, they can still be located and checked, and recast if need be, but it will make the process faster. If I might ask, who is the ward-witch who placed them? Are they not able to renew them?"
no subject
"The late queen." Uriel's mother, a scholar from Chrysocolla, had been especially talented. But the fact that she'd reworked the wards in the palace after she'd moved in had become a cause of worry for some of Uriel's advisers, particularly his uncle, in the light of the recent reports. "The... king," she pauses, because what she really wished to say but could not was the king's uncle, "wants to be certain we have not been compromised."
The words tasted like ash in her mouth. Uriel's mother had died from the Plague, yet here she was, parroting the words of the man she hated the most in the kingdom, as if the former queen had been a traitor.
no subject
But then, this kingdom had never loved magifolk. Even the types that were highly sought after in other kingdoms, like spellcarvers and vesselies seemed like they were barely called upon in Galenaea... at least in public. In private, who knew? Magifolk who had a good thing going rarely bragged about it; the thought that any of them could be replaced by someone more talented, more inventive, more loyal.
Pela got the sense she'd be walking on glass around Nausicaa, but she wouldn't let that intimidate her. Her work was solid, and she had done nothing wrong, nothing that could be seen as compromising her loyalty. The ward-witch offered a smile of confidence and obedience.
"It's never a bad thing to have them checked periodically anyway," she assured, hoping to smooth over the obviously sensitive subject. "I'll get started right away. Ahh... in the unexpected chance that I do find any irregularities... how should they be reported, Your Grace?"
Bring them straight to Nausicaa? To the King directly? Ignore them? (She hoped not, that was a tangle she didn't want to be involved in.)
no subject
She was only supposed to give the ward-witch her orders and get her settled in the palace. But an opportunity had presented itself, and it was the most excitement the young queen had in months.
"You can report to me directly." Can. Damn, she should've used a more definitive word. "While the King has yet to return," she amended, which didn't really make it so much better. She would just have to act fast and seize the moment. "Do you mind if I watch you work? Just... for a while." Her formal countenance faded a little as her curiosity seeped through. "I have never seen a ward-witch at work before."
no subject
The fact that Nausicaa's desire to watch her work was phrased as a request when an order would have been more expected, was more surprising than the actual asking. Some magi's enactments were subtle, even invisible. Wards were bright, colourful, flashy things unless specifically made to be invisible. Pela rarely had call to make hers hidden, and she was used to the people of her town watch and talk with her while she worked.
Still... Pela wasn't fool enough to think that phrasing aside, declining was a feasible response.
"Of course, Your Grace, I don't mind at all. I will be working in counterclockwise pattern, beginning from the southern side of the palace and spiraling inward. The exterior wards will be different than the exterior wards, which will be done clockwise from the north."
no subject
As Pela began to explain how she was going to go about her work, Nausicaa rummaged through the pile of papers on her study's desk. Finding nothing else demanding her immediate attention, she stepped around the table to move closer to the ward-witch. The motion revealed that she was not actually wearing a dress, but rather some sort of jumpsuit; though a queen, she was also a dragonrider and the daughter of a military commander, so she was more practical than most noble ladies.
And perhaps also more skeptical about magic.
"Why is that?" she inquires. "What happens if the pattern is disrupted?"
no subject
"Ward magic, like many schools of magics, draws its stability from stars," Pela explained as she tapped a small charm on her bracelet, a glass bead with a quadrille of arrows carved into it; one glowed, and she oriented herself to lead Nausicaa southward through the halls. Were she outside, she could have discerned south in a heartbeat, but the stone corridors of the palace had her directional sense muted.
"And ward magic is a forward-draw magic. That is, the energy to cast a ward is mustered when the ward is set, not when it is activated or expended. That's why wards can outline their casters," she said, bringing the explanation to the former Queen. Pela touched one side of the hall and under her hand, a curious swirl of energies lit up against the stone, moving like flowing water, leading them onward.
"But because it's a forward-draw magic, the scale and scope of a ward is limited by its caster's energy capacity. Skill and training can help, of course. They reinforce how one's body handles that draw. But to try and cast a single ward over an area the size of the palace for example, would cause such enormous drain that it would likely kill its caster, no matter how practiced they were. Which is why ward-witches create warding chains."
She touches the side of the corridor again, and this time the flowing swirls of light are tangled, looping over and over one another. "Here, see Your Grace? This is where two wards have been joined together, we call this a Ward Knot. So you can cover a much larger area by daisy chaining wards together like this, and it has the added benefit where if one ward were to fail, it would not compromise the entire structure."
no subject
But one piece of information struck her the most: To try and cast a single ward over an area the size of the palace, for example, would cause such an enormous drain that it would likely kill its caster, no matter how practiced they were.
She'd always suspected that Uriel's mother hadn't really died from the Plague. Before today, she'd believed it was a covered up assassination. But here was another angle now. Though if the late queen did die from reworking the palace wards, why did she decide to do that in the first place? Had she discovered something in Galenaea that made it necessary? Did she know, as someone originally from Chrysocolla, that there would be unrest and the threat of war in their future?
She watched the flowing swirls of light with fascination, suddenly seeming a couple of years younger than she initially appeared. This was who she'd been, back in the day, before the burden of the Crown. She'd wanted to see the world, ask all the questions, learn about everything she could.
"How long will it take for you to cover the entire palace?" Realizing she might sound impatient instead of thrilled, she quickly added, "I do not wish for you to overexert yourself. We can accommodate you for as long as you need... though the Council, I suppose, will wish for you to hurry." She did not sound pleased by that, but she would deal with the lords herself then.