Chapter 14: In Which, Despite Being Able To Presumably Kill Princess Asperia At Will, I Feel Very Much Not In Control Of The Situation
We were lead down into what looked like some sort of, I don’t know, alchemist’s place or something– vials and bottles and stranger glass devices everywhere. On top of a couch, which was inside a circle with all sorts of intricate glyph engraved on the stone around it, lay Sasha.
She was, apparently, asleep.
There were two rather nice chairs a bit of a distance away, and Princess Asperia sat in one, and gestured me towards the other. I started to walk towards Sasha, and she clicked her tongue. “We’re waiting until she wakes up, so we can see her without your influence.”
I stood for a moment, then nodded, and walked over to the other chair. “Your followers seem pretty fanatical, too, given their leader– mind if I hit one of them in the head with a null spell?”
“Certainly, that’s entirely fair," she replied without hesitation. "Choose whoever among my followers you want. A little headache is nothing to prove that they are truly loyal to me.” Agreeing without any hesitation at all, and indeed, all of her followers there looked ready to step forwards.
I looked between them and then shook my head, raising my hand. “That you’re all willing to have it done at the drop of the hat is enough proof for me. Can we talk alone?”
She smiled and waved her hand, and they all withdrew from the room, leaving us in the alchemist’s lab, which smelled like old wood and half a dozen smells I couldn’t even begin to place. “So, where did you get the idea to end slavery?”
Fuck. Where did Sasha get the idea to end slavery, I wondered? “Slavery is illegal in the world I come from.”
She blinked a few times. “You mean… no slavery at all…?” It seemed she was having trouble wrapping her head around this concept.
“...well… there’s illegal slaves that are kept under force of arms rather than law... and there’s people who are little more than slaves… and a few countries condone what is essentially slavery for prisoners… but other than that…?”
“If there’s still slaves, what’s the point? And more important, your Counts have that much individual power?”
“Ah, no, country is more like, a general term, applied to a… like a kingdom or whatever, but regardless of the form of government. As for the point… well, murder and theft are illegal, right? But they still happen, and depending who is doing it, maybe it’s not investigated too carefully it seems like, from what I’ve heard of the assassinations you’ve called out recently that got Valentine in so much trouble. But still, there’s less murder and theft than if they were just allowed, probably?”
She smiled, and gestured airily. “Yes, yes, that does make sense. I had nothing to do with those, by the way... it was probably one of my more fanatical supporters, really. If I knew who did it, I’d tell them to cool it, I didn’t need assassinations right there right now… it may have even been someone from the other side, sowing discord against me. People are already afraid of me, and they didn’t even hit important targets… not that I’m trying for assassinations right now, mind you.”
I raised an eyebrow and just looked at her for a little while, and she looked back, utterly without shame.
“O mighty hero from another world,” she managed to make this sound a bit sarcastic somehow, “are you really the sort of person who wishes to know how sausage gets made? Just accept that I may do some things you’d disapprove of, but if you want someone to end slavery, they’re going to have to do even more cruel and underhanded things than that… or let someone else do them for you.”
I frowned and nodded slowly. “I see. I may have questions later… but sure, let’s leave it for now.”
“Honestly, you’re going to have to be patient about that… I can promise you, if I stay in power for my entire life… well, and it’s as long as I hope it will be, I guess… that I will end slavery before the end of it, if it turns out I can trust you. But I’m hardly going to destabilize my country by suddenly outlawing it out of nowhere. There’s too many enemies around who would pounce on us if we did that.”
I raised an eyebrow. “All of your countries– all of your kingdoms are really that hostile to each other?”
“Not hostile, it’s just like wolves… if one weakens, the others will pounce on it and tear it apart.”
“...is this an arena thing? I’ve never heard of wolves doing that.”
“An arena thing, yes.”
“Probably wolves from different groups who are starved so as to be more ferocious than, wolves don’t act like that in the wild.”
“Ooh, look at who’s a wolf expert. How long have you been in our world, to figure out that about wolves on top of everything else?”
“We had wolves on my world. Have.”
“And they’re the same kind of wolves?”
“Well… they look much the same, and I haven’t seen that behavior in wild packs. Not that I’ve seen about it, but I read….”
She raised an eyebrow and I trailed off.
“Look, on my world I was more of an intellectual.”
“...hmm, sure. I guess I’ll have to ask the arenamaster about that sometime.”
“...you’re on speaking terms with an arenamaster?”
“...yes?”
“I thought you hated the arena.”
“I do, but it’s much easier to undercut him when he thinks I’m friendly.”
“’Keep your friends close and enemies closer’ sort of thing?” She sat up in her chair a little and smiled at me.
“Ooh, that’s catchy. I may steal it.”
“Go ahead, it’s merely a common saying on my world… but is that why you’re drawing me so close? Cause I’m an enemy?”
“No... someone who can murder an entire castle full of people just calls for different sorts of precautions, don’t you think?”
“...heroes have done that?”
“Multiple times. There’s a reason why hero summoning hasn’t been done in a century, it’s a wildly powerful pawn to place on the battlefield, but your control over it is very very tenuous. And you, with your easy command of magic… well, it’s not hard to see yourself promoting yourself to Queen.”
I smirked a little at that. “That some kind of marriage proposal?”
“Do you want a more formal one? I need to know you’re an ally, and marriage is the easiest way to do that.”
I flushed, open my mouth, closed it again. “...I’ll think about it. This is all very sudden from someone who wanted to kill me less than an hour ago.”
“’Wanted’ is such a strong term. More like ‘was afraid I might have to’. You’re extremely scary, you know that?” She stood up, and placidly walked up to sit in my lap. I moved my chained arms out of the way so she wouldn’t be uncomfort– no wait, what was I doing?
“Why are you sitting so close?”
“You can kill me wherever in the room I am, right?”
“...yes.”
“So why not sit in my fiance’s lap, if I might be murdered? Get to know her a little better?” She leaned in for a soft kiss on my cheek, and I gently put my hands on her shoulders and held her back a little.
“We aren’t fiances. I’d prefer if when Sasha wakes up, she doesn’t see you all over me.”
“...she’s literally your slave, and she may be a bit foolish, but she’s not completely ignorant. She knows real people get married. I’m not going to try to have her eliminated or anything… if anything, your bond with each other is the only reason I decided I might side with you.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Really? You seem quite contemptuous of her.” My voice was cold.
She stroked my arm. “Don’t be like that, love. There’s nothing wrong with saying things like they are.”
I gently picked her up and set her back down in her chair in an instant, before walking back to my own… other than the loud clanking, the chains didn’t hinder me at all.
Within seconds, a few of her servitors immediately rushed in, but she waved them away again with a smile. “Look, I’m not going to get rid of your slave, if we become allies. It’s clear you two have a strong bond, and if that’s true even without your magic on her, then there's no reason to not have such a good and loyal girl around. I expect you’ll be similarly kind to my harem. You’ve already impressed me with how you handled my people. Was it efficient? No. But such a good way to prove that you’re my potential ally. To put trust in me, and ask me to put trust in you. If you treat guards and servants you’ve never meant so kindly, and are so loving towards a mere slave, it stands to reason you’ll treat your wife well, too, does it not?”
“Wife… is that the only way we’re going to be allies?”
“I’m willing to listen to counterproposals. Is that so bad, becoming my wife?”
“Yeah, well, look, you may be a princess, and you may be beautiful, but… I don’t know where I’m going with this. I need to think about this.”
“Oh, take your time, by all means. I guess I could adopt you, instead… of course, that would mean you’d be my subordinate. My hand in marriage is the only way you’ll ever be almost my equal, no matter how powerful you are in combat.”
I considered this for a moment. “Are heroes even adoptable?”
“No one’s ever done it, although a few have married them. I’m sure it would be a huge scandal.” She giggled and waved her hand. “Scandals are so much fun.”
“...doesn’t that hurt your chances for the throne?”
“Oh, I have no doubt it does. But as long as only one of the Princesses is standing at the end, she will be crowned the winner.”
“...you’re really okay with killing your sister?”
She shrugged. “Hey, she started it when she was 12 and I was 14, trying to have me murdered.” She shook her head contemptuously. “Really. It was a good setup, too.”
“...what if it was a setup by someone who wanted you two to fight?”
She considered this for a moment. “You know, if you had told that to 14-year-old me, you might have made a good point. But at this point… what if it was a setup? We’ve done so much to each other and each other’s people I don’t think there can ever be real trust between us now.”
“That’s too bad if so.”
“Perhaps. But she lacks both social graces and patience. If it wasn’t for her being a Seer, literally no one would put up with her. If she had been quiet and obedient, I may have allowed her to live.”
I tried not to think about that part too hard. “...how do you even think you’re going to win against a seer?”
“Okay, so, for a Seer, they see the possibilities of the future, right?”
“...sure?”
“The more possibilities, the harder it is to see. For my survival, the more possibilities that exist, the better.”
“Ah.”
“Exactly. Thus: chaos.”
“...does seeing the future in itself change it?”
A blank stare. “...I beg your pardon?”
“Well, in my world, there’s this branch of… magic, let’s call it, known as ‘quantum physics’, not that I know more than the basics. Observing a particle affects it’s behavior, and moreover, you can set up experiments where the particle inaccurately predicts the future. I think one thought experiment was called the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester, where… okay, I’m not sure I can explain this to you, it’s hard enough to explain to people from my world, but basically it has a chance of blowing up a bomb, but also, because of this, it has a chance of telling you the thing you are pointing it at is a bomb. I am vastly oversimplifying this.”
She laughed. “A rather elegant way to test bombs, to see if they explode. Why not just have a seer check the future for you?”
“Um, we don’t have that branch of magic.”
She looked to me with interest. “...do you have any magic from your home world?”
...could I even figure out anything useful about science to tell her? “...no comment.”
“...ahhh. I believe that would explain it. The magicians… ‘scientists’, I believe your people call them… we haven’t had one of those before. So you, a magician, comes to this world, and of course studying magic comes quickly to you, because the skills overlap somewhat. You keep on becoming more valuable.”
I was sweating slightly. Oops. I hoped she didn't expect too much from my patchy half-understanding of pop science.
“We should definitely get married. You’re a crazy valuable piece.”
“That’s not exactly flattering.”
“Well, you’re a very hot piece of ass, too. I’d rather you were my wife than my daughter, honestly.”
She winked, and my face heated up, and I put my head in my hands. “...please wake up soon, Sasha.”
From the couch, a weak voice spoke up.
“...Master?”