carl@fire

"Thirty five!" shouted a voice that Isemeine thought sounded suspiciously like James Obelyn, a noble who was known to be publicly campaigning against the sale of long-ears on the basis that it would corrupt the children.

"Thirty six!" called Reynard Arderne, plainly visible to her across the auction hall from the effects of whatever strange-tasting alchemical potion Carl had produced.

Isemeine clutched her hands across herself and shuddered—not for the first time since she'd arrived—as she recalled yet again how precariously close to disaster she'd come earlier that day in the coffeehouse. Of course he'd be present. A small miracle Tomas isn't. I cannot imagine how I'd ever thought him handsome or charming. Her stomach churned. He was obviously never interested in me. How did I not see it sooner? He was simply another of them. No better than the man who's forced himself upon me so many times already, simply more skilled in the concealment of his depravity.

"Fifty million!" shouted the distinct voice of Symonne Wylde, one of her mother's closest friends, who she recalled with some small amount of fondness from the woman's gifts of reading material when she was younger.

The entire city is rotten to the core. I'd never realized the severity of the problem until now. Seeing the previous auction, how they bid so eagerly for an obedient toy with which to fornicate? She drew her feet up in the seat. She'd had scant few moments of relaxation since she'd arrived, but they'd only been possible when Carl had made her realize that she was no longer alone.

He's such a mystery! Isemeine frowned at the new line of thought. An outworlder he may be, but he doesn't behave like one. He acts as if… She felt an unfamiliar feeling in her chest. It's as though he's entirely unaffected by the utter depravity of this place. But how is such a thing even possible? He spent a mere moment gawking at it before turning to me without the slightest interest in his eyes. And he was unmoved by the beauty of that buxom long-ear before this as well. How—

"You should make the bid," Carl's whisper, just next to her ear, startled her out of her thoughts and caused her to jump in fear at the man's sudden closeness.

She relaxed after a moment. It was just Carl. Her mind turned to the words he'd spoken, and she shook her head at once in firm denial. No, Carl, it must be you. I could never speak out in front of this many of the city's nobles. I—

"It's your revenge, right?" Carl asked, nodding insistently. "If you really wanna stick it to 'em, they need to see and hear you taking their toy away."

The reasoning is sensible, but I… I can't. She shook her head once more as her mind turned to the inevitable consequences. If I personally anger Reynard, my mother would never let me—

"Why not?" Carl asked, seeming unwilling to give up.

Isemeine looked away, unable to face his piercing eyes that she felt were able to grasp her every weakness. She turned her hands up on her lap and looked down at them, marveling momentarily at the bones which lay just beneath her skin.

Bones which were shaking in fear, though she could never admit it aloud.

Her thoughts turned grudgingly back to the question she'd been asked, which led her back to the same thoughts. "I…" she trailed off, too afraid to even utter the words.

She was Isemeine Charus. The fourth princess never showed fear. Fear was not becoming of royalty. Her manners tutor, the strict old Mister Compton, had drilled that into her relentlessly. Royalty should never be seen to show weakness. Fear, anger, sorrow, none of these befit members of the royal family unless they were being used for something—inciting the people to war, was the most common example used.

Isemeine warred with herself.

The tutoring had gone much deeper than simple teachings and phrases. In order not to show fear, one must actively triumph over it. The memories of how, at the age of six, she'd been forced to sit just out of reach of a soldier's trained attack dog as it struggled with all its might to break its chain and bite through her neck—how she'd seen what it would do to her when a prisoner from the castle dungeon was executed in that exact manner before her very eyes—had stuck with her vividly.

It had taken her far longer than her sisters or brother to overcome the challenge of not flinching for a full hour while blindfolded. What they'd managed in a week or two, she'd taken a full nine to achieve.

She couldn't help it.

She was too afraid.

She'd seen what the beast would do to her! She'd spent the rest of the day crying afterwards, unlike her siblings, who had each begun the trial within the same hour that a man or woman was brutally slain while they watched.

"Fear is the ultimate sign of weakness," Mister Compton had admonished her when she'd thought to question the concept. "It is insidious, and it must be rooted out from your soul before it can be allowed to spread. If anything, your parents have been too soft on you. Emma was able to rid herself of her fear at the age of five!"

Her parents had agreed with him no matter how she'd begged them to please let her skip this small part of her tutoring.

"It's a rite of passage that every member born into the royal family has undertaken for centuries, Isemeine," her father had said. "You must be rid of your fear early on before it has a chance to grow within you. How else can you hope to stand against the terrible armies of the devils who seek to eradicate humanity?"

She'd managed it eventually, but only when her newest tutor, a Mister Godfry—who was to teach her the ways of intricate thinking and argumentation—had secretly procured for her an alchemical potion which deadened her senses, allowing her to sit motionless for two full hours, blindfolded, as the horrid beast charged, bit, barked, and slobbered at her. Finally, Mister Compton had proclaimed her victory over fear, and a feast had been thrown to commemorate the occasion.

But Isemeine had never rid herself of fear. No, she'd only learned to conceal it, to press down upon it so forcefully that it remained unnoticeable to anyone else.

Her love of knowledge had begun soon after.

The Royal Library was a place where animals were never allowed.

Isemeine was terrified of animals. It had only been a dog that terrorized her, but the fear had quickly spread to anything with a snout and sharp teeth, then anything with fur, and soon after anything with four legs. She'd never ridden in a carriage drawn by an animal since then for that very reason.

She'd been so clever and skilled at concealing her fear, too. Surely none had ever guessed that behind her calculating gaze—behind her witty discourse about whatever topic she'd recently been considering to distract herself—was the same, terrified six year-old girl. No, people thought her odd, they thought her beautiful, they thought her mind tainted by devils, but they never imagined she was afraid.

Her facade had fallen apart when Tomas had cornered her earlier. All the fear she'd pressed down had exploded, pressing down on her. She hadn't been able to breathe under the suffocating weight of it. She'd imagined—she'd known—she would die from it.

A fitting end, she'd had the idle thought as her vision had dimmed while she sat in that depraved coffeehouse. The princess who had always lived in fear finally succumbing to it. There would be some mystery surrounding the cause of her death, but it would never be solved. And nobody would be truly upset, either. She was not in line to the throne, she was not an important member of the court, and she was not especially well-liked by any but the common citizens who only saw her as the one member of the nobility who deigned to speak with them on a somewhat regular basis—so long as there were no animals nearby.

Carl would be upset if she perished, Isemeine felt. He'd done what only one other person in her life had ever done for her, and he kept doing it.

He'd protected her.

She didn't understand why he did it, but she believed him now when he said he would do something, even if she'd only met him a couple hours earlier.

"I'm afraid," she said quietly.

It was the first time in twelve years she'd uttered the words.

The words that she must not say.

She felt a hand grasp the outside of her shoulder and squeeze.

Isemeine hated to be touched. Especially by men. There was only one who'd touched her with such familiarity of late, and it brought her nothing but anger, and fear, and despair.

The hand squeezed again, and somehow she felt that she was gaining strength from it. The inevitable punishments from her mother for sneaking into the Creature Marketplace seemed further away, the consequences of having been a party to threatening the life of the kingdom's wealthiest young man seemed less consequential, and even the idea of confronting that young man's incredibly powerful father…

"You don't need to be afraid here anymore, Mina," Carl said, his voice filled with confidence. "It's just a game, right? I'm here with you, and we're leaving right after."

Isemeine took a breath. She felt suddenly lighter, as though the ever-present weight of her many fears was abating. She couldn't stand up to all these powerful people. No, it was impossible. Her mother would lock her in her chambers after having them searched and cleaned of anything that might relate to her condition. Her steamcar would be destroyed, as would the strides she'd been making towards adapting her steamcar's engine for use on small boats. The Hero would return and rape her yet again—perhaps even forcing her to bear a child—and the Arderne family would surely do something to pay her back for embarrassing Tomas so publicly.

But those were all the problems of Isemeine Charus.

Isemeine Charus had to remain to face her mother's wrath as well as any number of other inescapable punishments and horrors.

Isemeine Charus could never leave Charus City.

Mina could, however.

Mina didn't need to remain trapped under the weight of obligations she'd never wanted or cared for.

Mina brought her head up and nodded. "Yes," she said, finding a sudden surge of confidence flowing through her.

Mina didn't know where her new life would take her, but she did know one thing with absolute certainty.

She was finally free.