Tatterdemalion

Fellowship: The Heart

Coleman! Jackdaw!

Wolf makes an annoyed snuffle. “Not mirror,” she points out. “Mirror was... it was... unique. Distinct. That’s it. Distinct.” She gives Coleman a flat glare and then awkwardly pats the bundle of quivering fox. “You’d tell,” she says, and then clams up again, having presumably used all of her words for now. But she keeps patting fox and being present. A skinny, traumatized rock for foxes to cling to.

“I must confess some curiosity,” the Blemmyae says, turning to look at Jackdaw (a movement of his entire torso). “What, precisely, brought this one down here? She’s not one of the Vermissian’s folk, and she seems constitutionally unfit for the environs of the Heart.” A gleam enters his dark nipple-eyes. “Now, if she has some pressing business... perhaps I could augment her, for a fair price.”

***

Ailee! Lucien!

“Surma,” the one-armed mouse says, by way of introduction. “And hopefully we won’t have to fight at all. It’s like, who’d come to a carnival just to get their hands on clown books?” But Ailee notices her tensing up, and she’s definitely sizing up Lucien and the Professor.

The sound of the rain on the canvas is becoming almost deafening. There must have been a sudden storm rolling in. The lanterns hanging from the top of the tent start swaying, casting shadows this way and that as Surma approaches the pile of books.

“Find anything interesting?” she asks, with a surprising amount of menace for how terribly small she is.

A crack of thunder almost drowns out the rain— and Jackdaw enters the tent. She’s had a carnival makeover and is under the influence of another name she’s picked up, thus the glowing spray-paint tattoos and the uncharacteristic confidence. Everybody say hi, Jackdaw. Come to watch Ailee’s crush beat up Lucien?

Sunshards

Rose from the River and Princess Chen of the Northern Wind end up joining the rest of their merry band of travelers for lunch. It’s easy enough to see them coming, as Chen sways up and down as Rose walks, perched on the monk’s broad shoulder like a colorful parrot. Rose has one arm up to keep her aloft, and another on her walking stick, and waves at Yue and Hyra (and Kat and Cyanis) with a third.

“Maybe you can help our dear, sweet little princess out,” Rose says, swinging down Chen neatly and putting her down in a seat. “She can’t seem to decide what she should get as a souvenir, and she’s having such trouble enunciating clearly. You’d think all those royal tutors would teach her how to speak, not squeak~” Condescending headpats, deployed! Pat pat pat!

But can you blame Chen, when she’s been shown off like a trophy on Rose’s shoulder all morning? When Rose has had girls come up to her oohing and aahing over her strength, taking her for a last marvel of the market, and asking if they can touch her muscles? When Rose has quietly reminded Chen that all she needs to do to be put down is ask like a good little girl? Anyone would be a flustered wreck under those circumstances, the poor darling— and still she’s got that ring in a death grip, not having figured out what to spend such a precious treasure on at all. (Why, surely, she doesn’t mean to keep it. But what if, hypothetically, she didn’t get anything? Would Rose demand it back, or would she get to keep it, or would Rose take her by the chin and tell her that she’d look beautiful wearing it? So many distracting thoughts to think about!)

Rose buying Chen noodles without asking her what she wanted is also a flex. A gambling flex— Rose might quietly be hoping she read the princess right— but a flex nonetheless. Rose from the River rides the hard edge of temptation, just so she can see Chen hide her face and make those incoherent little noises in front of everybody.

If only they could have continued all day, and into the night, when it comes to that! As it is said,

The pheasant calls his mating-song,
the water ripples in the rushes.
How pleasant is the wickedness of a lover
in the coolness of the patient dawn.

Breathless Dead

“Right, yes, the Sowers!” The Sowers? The Sowers. The Sowers? Redana needs to start visualizing something that’s not those little spherical constructs from that adventure serial. Nope. That’s all she’s getting: swarms of spheres descending on the skies of Ridenki. Auspex! Help her!

And while you’re at it: Mom, stop! You’re going to win! Redana has seen the wreck of that station with her own eye; this story has a happy...

No. Redana frowns, and it’s a serious enough expression that it sends every servitor in the room into an anguished hush. This wasn’t a happily ever after. This war might have been the right thing to do, to wage, to struggle through... but it’s going to lead back to Tellus. Back to a prison for humanity. Back to a little girl watching the clouds in the hope a star would pierce through.

“Was it the guilt?” She asks herself, fingers brushing on the map spread out upon the table. “Was it because you felt like this, that you needed to... make up for it? Why did you take us there?”

Athena only knows what conclusion her generals are going to jump to.

Sunshards

Rose from the River has gentle hands that could split open logs of wood. There is no clumsiness in them, and neither does she overpower Chen like an overexcited hound. When she places the nose ring in Chen’s palm and curls Chen’s fingers around them, it is simply that resisting those fingers would be like throwing yourself repeatedly against a tree trunk. And when she encloses her fingers around Chen’s hand! Chen could tug and tug and set her heels in the grass and fling herself backwards and still not free herself from that tomb of fingers, that prison of cool flesh (or is it simply that Chen is too, too warm?).

“I do insist, Princess,” she says, and the capital letter is perfectly enunciated. “After all, you are such a polite and pleasant young girl. Eloquent, too.” When those eyes glance up, those eyes so used to betraying weariness and the inner grief of a princess, they find Rose’s steady gaze and the corner of her mouth cocked up just so. “As a devotee of the Way, it is my responsibility to both accept the gifts I am given for my services,” and the way she purrs the word might send a lightning bolt right down through a Princess’s spine until it dissipates in the earth below, “and to give freely as the Way moves me.”

She does not let on that she is far less certain that this use is, strictly speaking, the will of the Way. Bringing joy to Yue was one thing, but this is winding up a girl just for the satisfaction, for the way her heart jumps when Chen squeaks, for the feeling of her hot pulse where Rose’s fingers rest against that pale wrist, for knowing that every word she speaks makes Chen redder and happier. And happiness is good; and as long as her touch is light, she will leave Chen with fond memories, not a broken heart. But she plays a perilous game with high stakes, and she will not suffer the loss if she loses. Or, at least, not as much of a loss. Surely.

But she does not let go of Chen’s hand. “But remind me. What do polite little girls say when they are given a gift? I’m sure you know the answer, Princess Chen of the Twin Shards, Bladesaint and aspiring artist. Hmm? Use your words, Chen. I haven’t gagged you again, after all.”

The yet is palpable but unspoken.

Breathless Dead

SING, O Muse, of the fury of Nero—
daughter of the virgin goddess[1], who brought upon her home
ruin. Many a noble man found himself cast down,
made a meal for the red jaws of her hounds.
That was good feasting they had at Hades’ table[2].

Her hair is up, wrapped around the iron wreath. Red Saber lies naked on her lap; despite the name, it is a wicked-tipped flamberge, gleaming like blood in the low light. Her armor is layered; the ornaments and gilded tabard belying the mail and padding below. The Ianuspater attends to its functions admirably: perimeter scan, war archival (entry: Ridenki, agri-world, supply lynchpin, subversion priority Alpha, theater ongoing for forty days, Theater Commander: Daimyo Mengekai.), aetheric receptor (entry: Demeter immanent. Hades, Athena in attention. Arrival: Artemis, among your commanders.), and second eye, burning bright when she looks at herself in the mirror and looks again because she is something between the Empress and the Princess. She is younger than she had thought. Mothers are ancient forever, unassailable, impossible to catch up to.

She twitches back a curtain, not quite trusting the Ianuspater, that thousand-fold jewel. Conversation outside stops, all eyes turn to her, and Redana panic-shuts the curtain again. But what is she doing? Like Mom would have been caught dead peeping out and second-guessing herself! Be the Nero you pretended to be, Dany[3]!

So the Director pulls back the curtain decisively and puts on her game face, looking down upon the assembly. “Daimyo Mengekai,” she says, one hand resting on Red Saber. “I have waited long enough. Present your proposal.” And Mengekai turns[4] to face her, Artemis by his side.

***

[1]: almost certainly artistic license. The only grandparents that Redana knows about with any certainty are the Castrate and the Sicklekeeper. The origins of Nero Claudius are a great sweep of imperial mythology, and the truth lies at the bottom of those waters.

[2]: the iconic opening lines of the Neroiad, composed three centuries post-Declaration by Avernon Septimus, Poet Laureate of Tellus. The uncharacteristically dark tone was made at the subject’s request; the sweep of the poem depicts Nero as receiving the blessings of the Olympians, and through each blessing, becoming worthy of rule.

[3]: “Come, Daimyo Beylaketan! To the Southern Reach!”

[4]: oh Stormfather he big. Resist the urge to challenge him to sparring right now. Or give him headpats[5].

[5]: we do not give Ceronian Daimyos headpats, Dany!!

Fellowship: The Heart

slap slap slap pittapap slap.

The mime falls on his white face and grovels expressively, shoulders heaving silently in the smoky gloom.

“Well now, brother,” comes the rich, low voice. No, not low: subterranean. “What’s got you all up and in a twist, then?”

The hot coal eyes watch the mime-art close. Lips curl up into an amused smile, baring yellowed fangs.

“Well, now. Don’t you worry yourself, brother. Good of you to bring word, and you’re right, you got the learning in your head. That’s a sin, you know— letting the mirrors out but not taking their place. Two guests on one ticket? Can’t have that. Can’t have that.”

Fingers thick as sausages close around a cane. It is a cane in the same way that Excalibur is a sword; it is huge and black and capped with a gilded skull.

“But it’s a miracle, too,” the Ringmaster says, and his bulk in the gloom may as well be a mountain. “It’s been too long since we had ourselves a proper holler. You’re all letting yourselves go to rust. And I ask you: are we called to be tame? No, I say; and no, I’ll tell you again. We’re called to the Blood! And it weren’t never made to lie in idleness...”

***

Ailee!

First comes the wind. It rattles the lights and snaps the lines back and forth. It groans as it snatches up hats and wigs, and with it blowing at your back, every step is light and close to losing control.

Then, behind the two of you, the shrieks begin, and the hammering sound of rain. She takes your hand in hers and together you bolt, the deluge barely missing the tips of your tails as you stumble into—

Well. She’s a Bookhunter. Of course she’s still on the hustle. Because the two of you have made it to the sorriest pile of books you’ve seen since that time Jackdaw got into the artisanal coffee. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s Lucien and the Professor. Because that’s totally what you wanted: their company, while your new bestie (and what’s even her name, you didn’t think to ask) tries casually to take a look around without looking like she’s looking around.

“Ah, Ailee,” the Professor says. “Come to sift through the wisdom of bygone eras?”

***

Coleman!

“Mirrors,” Wolf says, and gives Jackdaw a pat of halting, worried affection, as if she’s trying to convince herself that the fox won’t just be a drain on the few rations she could scrape together in Wormwood. “Dangerous mirrors.”

“The House of Mirrors is a sacred place,” the Blemmyae says. He holds a Ringmaster-sized tub of popped and buttered corn to one side of his body and shovels another handful into his navel-mouth. “Not holy. Distinct words. Dedicated, set apart. I do not know what it is dedicated to. I pray never to find out.”

The aquarium is full of dark glass and bright fish, most of which are orange-and-white. They flit playfully in and out of huge tangled anemone-forests, and behind and beyond them are vast things that should not fit in a circus sideshow.

There’s also a stingray of some sort clinging to the glass. It’s got a smiley face! And fangs!

Sunshards

Rose from the River has been very much like a tree. Which is to say, she looms, and in looming offers shade on the road; her voice is like the rustle of leaves as the wind kisses them, one by one, and she has offered up wordless walking-songs and quiet, straight-faced jokes and has made many an appreciative noise listening to Chen and Cyanis and Yue talk; she has been a quiet strength, though never too far away from Cyanis, who is still (eventually) headed to Cutie Fox Jail.

And perhaps someone remembers getting up in the middle of the night, because there’s nothing like sleeping under the stars for making you need to go after just a few hours of sleep, and hearing that low, husky laugh, and peering in through the dingy glass windshield of the helm to see Rose curled up in a chair, legs crossed, chin on her palm and elbow on her knee, bottle of the local special resting in the hollow of her body, hunched over the Go board. She was playing black, they might remember. Did they stay to watch her consider her next play, finger running circles around the mouth of the bottle, the low lamplight playing on her beech-smooth skin? Rose didn’t seem to see them, if they did; or did she simply not acknowledge them? It’s hard to tell with her, after all. The creak of his voice, the rich vibration of hers, sound without coherence, all mingled together with the lap of water on the side of the boat (a reminder of why they woke up in the first place, come to think of it) and the whine of the mosquitoes all about.

And yet she remains as mild and pleasant as ever the next day, despite how little sleep she may have had. The danger of her is a deep-hidden thing on the road, only visible in the way her muscles work under her skin as she walks, slow and slithering, lightly coated in sweat by the time the temple is reached. And there, oh, her swordplay! That was a chance for Chen to watch what Rose is like when she is simply playing for time, effortless, not even drawing her sword from its staff-form. Her opponent attacks, and she simply envelops the move as if she had been in charge of the stage-directions. Her staff hooks ankles and pins wrists and lays the priestess out right on her rear end and lifts her chin up so playfully, so carelessly, to that low and seemingly careless smile. And then perhaps Yue was glad not to see Hyra fight her, then!

Rose has been very much a tree, and so it was perhaps, not surprising when the horses shied away from her, and knickered their concern, and Rose ruefully chuckled and told them that she could keep up with horses if she pleased, but that was before the big teal-blue horse with the shaggy fetlocks approached her, the one with a shoulder as tall as Yue. Then Rose reached out and touched its cheek, and a moment passed between them, and Rose bowed her head until her forehead rested on his, and she thanked him for his service. She rides side-saddle, with her staff over one shoulder and her hand on his flank, effortless in how she shifts her balance to avoid being thrown.

And now we are in the now, and her companions are delighted by the sight of the balloons, and perhaps no one is looking at Rose from the River (which is to be expected, when there are such wonderful things to look at just above their heads), but that would be a shame, because her smile is a sudden flash of white and her eyes shine as she looks up and sees the balloons and the dragon, and she does not look away from the lightning-strike, she drinks it in and watches as the balloons soar. And only then does she breathe out. “Ah,” she says, in gratitude. The world has given something to her again. It has given her a dragon today, and a hundred balloons, and, yes, a chocolate egg, for (and perhaps someone who glances back might read this in her smile and the way she watches so intently) Rose from the River has never had the good fortune to attend the carnival of balloons, descended all the way from the Sky Castle.

And when Yue asks if she can without explaining what she means, because it’s clear as dawn what she means, and charges off without waiting, Rose meets Hyra’s eye for a moment, and a moment of acknowledgement between guardians passes between them. Then she nods, and pats her equine companion, and slides off him with serpentine grace. “Of course, Yue the Sun Farmer!” She plays with one of her golden earrings as she catches up with the excitable girl, and by the time she catches up with Yue, she’s able to slide it easily out of the furrow in her skin, already closing again in its wake. Her changing may be slower now, but it still comes well enough for such small things. “Here,” she says, her voice the sort of gentle that makes grand proclamations sound quite ordinary, dropping it into Yue’s palm and closing her fingers around it. “Jeska the Fire Sage gave this to me for my service. Now I give it freely. Trade it for whatever you like.”

Then she gives a playful look to Chen and taps the ring in her nose. “Would you like an allowance, too, illustrious Twinshard Princess? I might not be as rich as your mothers, but in their absence… well, someone has to take care of you,” she purrs, almost keeping her intent to fluster off her face. Dear, darling little Chen, beware! If you accept a ring-gift from Rose from the River, you expose yourself to headpats and affectionate condescension-- but if you don’t happen to have your allowance on you, what else are you to do? (And even if you do have it, perhaps you might want to be taken care of, to have Rose’s strong, sure fingers curl around your hand as she looks you in the eye and you go redder and redder until you’re as red as the cherry tomatoes, and to hear her whisper good girl juuuust loud enough for Yue to hear…)

[If Chen is enticed by Rose from the River, at any point on this journey, Rose has rolled a 10 just for her.]

Breathless Dead

The first thought is simple: brace for impact! And the second is that any weapon that can be seen from orbit is unlikely to be one that can be survived. For a moment, Redana stands there, staring—

And then the Auspex answers the questions she did not even ask. A world, and the Yakanov spinning around it. Zap! The world hangs suspended in golden chains. Zip! The world spins in its web, faster, faster, the wrong direction, as years run backwards on a counter. Zowch! A golden chain runs through Chibidana’s head, and her clothes go back to the sort of historical style from that great museum of the War. Zotzie! Chibi-Alcedi pick up their spears and lock into a phalanx as from the sky...

Oh no.

“They’re bringing back the war,” she says, to Demeter and Hades and Poseidon, to the chaos around her, to nobody at all. “They’re going to make everybody here live through it again.” And for a moment she has the ridiculous thought of climbing somewhere high with a bat and waiting for the weapon to strike, palms sweaty as she makes the one swing that would ever count—

But it’s ridiculous, and too late, and once that thing fires Redana is going to be one of her mother’s soldiers standing in the middle of an Alcedi— no, it’ll be them in the middle of her mother’s fortress, and then everyone will start fighting, and they won’t kill each other on purpose but the point of fighting back then was to stop people from daring to get back up, and don’t they still have Hermetics here? If they left, did they take Iskarot? Did Iskarot leave her behind because she ran off?

The Auspex begins the countdown to final firing and Redana screams in frustration. There’s nothing more she can do. She’s stuck down here, and...

And what must a commander do when they know they are going to be compromised, Redana?

”In such circumstances, the commander must, with all speed, send word to such subordinate as they trust, informing them of their will, and enclosing with their message continuity of command, such that their will may continue to be a living quality upon the battlefield, and their value to the antagonist as regards the disruption or full neutralization of their force will be negated to a necessary degree...”[1]

And Redana stands below that awful yellow star and raises one hand to her face, covering her other eye.

***

And there stands the fifth person to appear suddenly in the cramped room, quite suddenly without anyone else seeing her appear. She stands there, pale, hair caught in an unseen wind, blind yet with that awful blue star burning past the simple leather in front of it. The Auspex will not allow itself to be cloaked when it goes to the effort of entangling Redana so. The Alcedi would call her a ghost, and perhaps they would be closer to the truth than other guesses.

“Still down here,” the shade of Redana declares to Alexa (and thus to the room she does not see, her Auspex blind as it tears her in two and transposes her very self). Her voice is coming from an impossible distance, clear as a bell drifting through space, each word not so much spoken as carved into the senses. “You’ve got—“

And then the waveform snaps under the strain and the shade fades away until it is clear the false Redana was nothing more than shadows playing on a wall, somehow. And the final word remains unspoken.

***

[1]: Tactics of the Post-Molechian Era: A Thesis, Elacitus et alia, Published through the Imperial University Press, signed first edition.

Breathless Dead

"I invited her to every birthday."

The feeling of having put your foot in your mouth is just miserable. Redana's body threatens to crumple in on itself; she can't look any of the Alcedi in the eye, Lacedo least of all. "I brought her offerings, I made her sacrifices, and she always ignored me and made them rot away on the altar. And when she came here and started boasting about how my father wasn't any help, I..." She makes a violent, impotent gesture with one hand, one that just makes her all the more wound up.

"Honored Grandmother," she says, briskly, because she has to say it. Because now that she has incurred the wrath of her stepmother, she might as well be a Phalanx member without a shield: a danger to everyone around her. "I'm sorry. I have to leave. Hermes might be able to keep my father at bay, but I'm small and mortal enough to maybe slip past her notice, no matter what my stepmother does to punish me for what I said."

Then she looks at Lacedo's sandals and takes one hand in hers, because Redana Claudius is an oblivious battering ram of a girl when it comes to how she might make other people's hearts throb painfully. (After all, she lived with Bella for a decade, and fell asleep with her head in her maid's lap, and used her as a pillow at nights, and she has not yet realized why the world feels more dangerous and more lonely without her.) "Thank you, Lacedo," she says, with painful sincerity. "I'm sorry I made a mess of it. But I'm still going to speak with the Order of Hermes to make them do right by you. I promise."

Sunshards

Ah.

And here Rose from the River was, relaxed. It was, in many ways, cleansing to speak with Yue's stone. To be herself, naked and unguarded, to speak with something that was trying its best to understand her. And when the light faded away and the Sun Farmer hid behind her wolf-maiden, well, she was right to do so. Wasn't she? Rose from the River is all that she admitted: dangerous, and constrained by the Way by choice, and not your "friend." "Friends" are people who can relax in each other's company and trust themselves. Who could trust a creature whose heart still resounded with the ancient principles of her creators? You cannot suborn the heart of a true person. And so it is right for Yue to be afraid of her. Doubtless, without her admission, there would have been foolish overtures of friendship, and one or the other would have been hurt as Rose did her best to remain untangled. Her role is to touch their lives lightly, to do what is needful and to do what is kind, and nothing more.

She could have been content in that, but then she looks up from the sun-stones that she rolls between her long fingers so cleverly and sees Chen smile, and it is a sword thrust inside her to the hilt. There is no flush of embarrassment, no pretension, no self-awareness in that smile. It is like a sheet of glass placed between her and a overflowing heart, unable to hide anything, but between them all the same. There, her own walls brought low by the virtue of Yue's perfect sun, there is nothing that Rose can do in the face of that joy but long for it, to wish that she could have made Chen of the Twin Shards laugh so effortless and free.

The HUNTER-Class 猎犬 had been a rake, twisting red strings around its fingers to bring it close to targets, or to make itself invisible in its hunting-grounds; love was a knife in its hand, sharp enough to open a vein. Betrayal meant nothing. Victory was all. And then it waged its rebellion, and now that knife was wielded only at its own will, but a knife it remained. And then-- and then--

And then First of the Radiants was asked to become the glittering prince of a young woman's dreams. And it did so, without question. Well, no. With many questions: like this? And that? Is this right? Am I right? Did you? Another round? What do I say? Should I remain silent? And not all of these spoken, either, but asked, continuously, of her, so that he could be what she dreamed of. Her bastion, her prince, her love, her mirror. Until he asked the question of himself: how should we then live? And the answer could not be escaped, but pursued him, pulled him close, sang his new name until he had no choice but to make a choice: to deny the Way or accept its charge. To open himself to being moved by the spirit of right action, or to close himself about Yin's hand like a gauntlet. And he unfolded himself around his own heart and changed its vital essence, and changed herself into something true.

Which is so much to say that Rose from the River has never- not once- allowed herself to fall in love with someone. She has been entranced with beauty (and here one may imagine the smug, flushed face of Scales of Meaning, watching herself be watched, Rose from the River stepping willingly into fascination and action without thought). She has ridden her fingers underneath the bruised indigo sky; she is not some blushing innocent. But now she wants more, and struggles at the reins of her own chariot-heart. What would it be like to lift that chin and have Chen open those doe-dark eyes and look up at her without fear, without cunning, without anything but a desire to share the delight of little foxes and new friends?

Ah.

Now there is a question that cannot and should not be answered. Rose is the Thorn Pilgrim, and if we make a chessboard of the world she is the queen that will bring White and Black into checkmate in the same move, capable of moving like the rook and the bishop alike. What is she then to do? Ask Chen to follow at her heels just because it would please her? How is she to fill up the void left by the broken chains of connection, to be an entire world for Chen and still be attentive to the subtle commands of the Way? And that assuming if Chen would even... after all, she saw Rose choose setting the world right over saving her, she listened to Rose's heart-litany, even her relief at seeing Rose was doubtless innocent enough. It is one thing to be relieved by someone's arrival, and another thing entirely to throw away everything just to follow a monk on her travels. No. No, Chen would wilt like a flower plucked from the living earth and tossed carelessly into a satchel, losing petals and potency, crushed between notebook and pen-case. No. It is not for you to take, Rose from the River, because it would in no way benefit the girl. (The girl. Too young for her, too, even if one were to ignore the years spent in enchanted slumber.)

And even so, when Chen turns her attention back to Rose from the River, gently illuminated by the light of the dwindling afternoon and the gentle descent into twilight that Yue the Sun Farmer trapped within her stones, the monk's reply is inelegant: "Yes! Yes." Like a loyal hound she perks up, and hates herself for it. "Or do you forget who you talk to? I am a disciple of the White Doe School, harried by Qiu's minions across mountain and valley, committed to opposition to her for upsetting the balance of the world." And there, too, is another reason not to stare overlong, Thorn Pilgrim: or did you forget Chen herself will inherit two? Perhaps you will duel her when she is old enough for real battle. "And the Way has done enough to bring me here, to her, to you, to be of use; and I do not think that it will bid me lead her into Qiu's jaws unless such a thing was meant to be, and in that case-- well, the longer we keep her away from Qiu, the worse it will be for everyone, but I do not think it is so. I do not think it is so at all."

And she stands, still taller than Hyra, and looks down at Yue; and then she lowers herself to one knee, and bows her head. "Yue the Sun Farmer," she says, still wretchedly aware of Chen's eyes, and see, look, Princess, how she does her best to serve everyone, you are not special, what you shared was not special, it is simply the size of her heart, that is all. Walk away before Rose hurts you both. How many times, in how many ways can she warn you? "I know that you are afraid of me. And that is good! It means that you have both eyes open. But I have bound myself fast to serving the living breath of providence, and if you trust me, I will act for the good of everyone until the ten thousand fallen paths of this world conspire to break me. All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well: even so, I cannot make this choice for you. Take me, or lay me aside. The choice is yours, Yue the Sun Farmer."

And there is something about how she says that-- how she has said it, every time. As if it is her proper title, and there is honor and glory in it, and that she would rather call a Queen by her first name than imply that you were merely a Sun Farmer-- as if there is anything mere about it! There is sincerity there, none of that winking impish mischief that Chen has already encountered. And the effect, and the kneeling, and the danger sheathed: it might make a girl feel like a real Princess, or at the very least a proper handmaiden, and here a knight swearing herself to the cause of her safety. A dangerous knight, to be sure-- but in much the same way that Hyra herself is dangerous.

[Rose from the River, unfortunately, is Smitten with Princess Chen. I'm as surprised as you are. She may take a String on Rose from the River.]