Symbols of Nobility

Hella Aviz, Duchess of the Southern Reach, sits on her wooden throne, and Adelaide Tristé, Pearl Mage of Nacre, stands bound in the center of her sun-warmed hall and silently prays to Tristero in her heart: Let her be kind, O Lord of Passage. Should she call for my death, may it be swift. Yet please, let her stay her hand—let me serve you longer still in this realm.  

The throne of Ordenna’s Southern Reach is ironwood covered by quilted blood-and-bone fabric, sharp and intimidating even without the pikes crossed above it. Adelaide can’t help but compare it to the gilt lattice-work of Nacre’s noble courts, and find the Ordennan style rough and severe in comparison. Yet Hella Aviz lounges in her throne as if it’s the most comfortable chair in the world, her sword—dark blade and ruby-bloodied guard—casually draped across her legs and kept in place by one ring-covered hand. To Adelaide the rings look like a brawler’s: Thick and heavy and chosen for how they’ll pound and cut faces, not for giving the appearance of gilded rank.

Adelaide’s hands have finer jewelry, despite her lineage having been struck from Nacre’s nobility long generations ago; she wears pearls and moonstones set in obsidian and jet, chiaroscuro splendor on her fingers and trailing up her wrists. Yet, despite her familiarity with Nacre’s gem-wrought finery, she has a hard time looking away from the way Hella’s golden rings draw attention to the calluses and scars lacing her hands beneath the heavy jewelry. They shine bright against the light-curdling blade laid across Hella’s tunic-covered chainmail, and Adelaide resents how beautiful the effect is; she doesn’t want to think anything of the sort about the woman who will decide Adelaide’s fate.

No, she would much rather give Hella the respect she deserves as Duchess of the Southern Reach and refuse to show any other emotion; neither the fear she suspects Hella is often given but certainly isn’t owed, nor the attraction that Hella might incidentally gather unknowingly. So Adelaide meets Hella’s golden eyes, burning like suns in her warm brown face, and waits silently, back straight and ignoring the way her hands were bound together, for her judgement.

At last, Hella says, “My guards tell me you led them on quite a chase.” She taps her fingers on the blade, and Adelaide almost thinks she hears a pleased hum. “I’m curious how you managed that.”

Adelaide shrugs, letting the chains jingle noisily. “I didn’t evade them, Your Grace. Does it truly matter?”

Hella leans forward and her sword slips off her lap, dangling almost but not quite far enough to strike the floor. Adelaide misses the moment where her fingers close around its hilt, so natural is the movement. “But you did so well!” Hella’s voice is so earnest that Adelaide almost believes she’s genuinely enthusiastic, until her voice sharpens. “And, nobody here has skills like yours.”

“Magic is a skill, Your Grace,” Adelaide agrees. She spreads her hands as much as the bindings allow. “Forgive me if I am being too forward, but— That it’s uncommon here is the strange part.” She isn’t going to tell the Duchess that the only reason the guards caught her is because they all wear magic-repelling armor and wield swords that slice through spells like they’re nothing. That would be giving away far too much.

Hella sighs, and rises from her throne. Her sword stays hanging casually at her side, as if she doesn’t realise the threat inherent in the movement. Adelaide swallows, and realises: She probably doesn’t, in this society full of people who carry swords like extensions of their body. “Look. All I want is information. All you want is freedom. Isn’t that a fair trade?”

“Your Grace, it does sound fair.” Adelaide cocks her head to the side, letting her earrings sway into her neck. She sees Hella’s eyes flick to follow their shimmer as she continues speaking, trying her best not to be drawn out of the formality she knows is owed a duchess even if Her Grace seems to want to speak as plainly as a commoner. “However, I must ask for assurance of your end of the deal—I must own to the fear that it is not offered in good faith.”

“Great question.” Hella sheathes her sword in one smooth motion, and Adelaide holds her breath, uncertain if she’s truly being allowed to relax. Then Hella flicks her fingers at the guards, dismissing them, and Adelaide follows their motion. The guards do leave, and they don’t even say anything about it: They just give frustrated looks, and Hella doesn’t look at them at all. Adelaide doesn’t think the duchess realises how much the guards want to stay and ensure Her Grace’s safety. Once the guards leave, and Adelaide is left alone with the duchess, Hella says, “What assurance can I offer you?”

Adelaide stares at her, not comprehending the question for a moment. Nobody of peerage in Nacre would ask such a thing. To freely admit ignorance? It would be shameful. And yet, rough-hewn Duchess Hella with her open face and easy manner—she commands the respect and loyalty of everyone around her even as she speaks more plainly than any courtier Adelaide has ever known. In all her years serving within the Royal Court, nothing has prepared her for this, and so she says nothing at all.

Hella plants one hand on her hip and scratches her flame-red hair—that is in no way bound by her simple golden coronet—with the other, exasperated and not afraid of showing it. “Seriously. Your name is...” she screws up her face in thought and clapped her hands together after a moment. “Adelaide! Adelaide Tristé, right?”

Adelaide cautiously nods.

“Great, I got it this time!” Hella grins, clearly delighted by herself, and just as clearly inviting Adelaide to share her enthusiasm as she stage-whispers, “I don’t always.”

“How did you reach this position?” Adelaide asks, not quite meaning to let the thought escape into words—especially not ones so impolitic. But since they did, she firms her stance and her face as if she’d meant to all along and adds, “Your Grace,” in a way that any noble of Nacre would think insulting. Adelaide thinks Hella won’t even realise there was a pause or that it could be meant as insulting, and wonders at such casual obliviousness to court manners.

“Everyone decided they’d rather be on the nice side of my blade.” Hella says it so naturally that Adelaide almost misses the implicit threat in the words, so thrown is she by the way Hella’s still wearing an easy smile. “And I guess I’m okay at looking after people, so they haven’t tried to throw me out.” She shrugs again, body loose and relaxed as if she’d explained her preference for swordfish over tuna, instead of the possibility of her sudden and violent demotion.

Adelaide almost hates how disarming Hella is. She can’t hold the old country manners against her, but she desperately doesn’t want to be as charmed by them as she is, either. She keeps talking like they’re in the formal halls of Nacre, trying to hide how eager she is for that mode to be reciprocated. “Your Grace. Do you know why there’s no magic in your lands?”

“Nope.” Hella’s hand rests on the hilt of her sword; it doesn’t look like it’s intentional, just like it’s the most natural place for her hand to be. “Never had a reason to think about it.”

Adelaide grits her teeth. “I wanted to learn why.” She lets out a sigh and gives up all pretense of not telling Hella any information. “That’s why I’m here, Your Grace.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere!” Hella claps, almost laughing, and then gets more serious again. “So why did you fight my guards?”

Adelaide looks at the sword at Hella’s hip, then at the pikes decorating the walls behind the throne. “Because they saw me casting a spell and assaulted me. Your Grace, please believe me that all I did was defend myself. I meant no harm to your people.”

“Huh.” Hella cocks her head, sending her only sort-of-tamed hair falling across her shoulders. “What were you, uh, casting?”

“A div—” Adelaide scowls and cuts herself off. Hella won’t know the word if she doesn’t know magic. She re-starts, as if speaking to a child. She doesn’t let herself look at any symbols of nobility, because she can’t explain if she does; even the non-magical nobility of Nacre at least know the schools of magic. “A spell that I hoped would lead me to answers. It was not meant to be offensive.”

Hella frowns, and Adelaide sees her stroke the rubies on her sword. It looks absentminded, like it’s just something she does when she thinks, but it still leaves Adelaide on-edge, worried if she’s causing offense. “Did it look dangerous?”

Adelaide doesn’t rolls her eyes, but she thinks about it. “I don’t know, Your Grace. To the people of Nacre, I do not believe it would seem dangerous, but my country knows more of magic than yours. I must believe that your guards thought I seemed like a threat.”

“Right.” Hella smiles, and the self-deprecation hurts Adelaide’s court-trained soul. “Would it have hurt people?”

“No, Your Grace.” That answer is easy, even with Hella’s sun-bright eyes blazing into her, searing into her soul. It’s a solid ground to stand upon in a conversation that keeps getting away from her.

“Then this is all a giant misunderstanding.” Hella walks forward, and Adelaide refuses to flinch, even as Hella grabs her hands. At first it’s because she refuses to show Hella any fear, but then it’s because Hella’s hands are too soft and warm on hers, and it’s so at odds with the kind of duchess that Adelaide keeps expecting Hella to be. But the chains around her wrists clang to the ground as Hella keeps talking, and Adelaide can’t look away from those eyes. “Let me treat you to a meal to make up for this, please.”

Adelaide rubs her wrists, heart beating all-too-quick. “Yes, Your Grace,” she says eventually. As much as she’s off-balance, dinner sounds... safe. There should be some kind of rules there that at least resemble those of any other court. “Thank you for your generosity.”

“Great!” Hella beams at her, bright and shining.

Adelaide can’t look away, and she wonders, as she trails behind the woman who could have killed her without a single repercussion, if there’s any way for her to prepare for whatever is going to happen next.

The answer, she finds out, is that there isn’t.

Adelaide isn’t surprised by this, precisely, but she doesn’t know what to do with herself. All she can do is try her best to keep up with Duchess Hella Aviz’s energy and joy, and finally accept that there’s no way to keep thinking of this beautiful practical woman as a duchess—because every time she calls Hella by her title, she receives a look like she’s hurt by the distance Adelaide is scrambling to create, and Hella pointedly keeps talking like the commoner she grew up as despite clearly being of royal lineage.

When Adelaide first calls Hella by her given name, at the end of dinner as they drink amber beer that’s sour on her tongue, the smile Adelaide receives etches itself deep into her memory, and she almost forgets what she was saying. It’s uncanny, and frustrating, and nobody she’s ever met has had such an effect upon her before. But she doesn’t go back to using Hella’s title, and the way Hella relaxes like a giant cat finally finding a sunbeam is more appealing than Adelaide really wants to admit even in the privacy of her own mind.

As the night draws on and Hella’s laughter echoes in the vault of her heart, Adelaide realises she isn’t sure she can bear to return to Nacre’s courts after this—though she doesn’t know what she can do in this magicless land, she wants to find out.

And she wants to do it at Hella’s side.