Work Text:
All love is conditional. Ishbell just wants conditions that are easier to satisfy.
Sometimes the conditions are impossible. Ishbell is an unwanted child, sold off as soon as she was born because she killed her mother and because she couldn’t make enough money to cover her father’s debt. Ishbell knows she isn’t smart, but she’s never seen a baby able to conjure up a treasure chest full of gold. All this she knows second-hand, of course — it’s the Sval captain’s favorite story, and that means it’s everyone’s favorite story.
“We get a lot of war orphans in this trade, but can you believe where this one came from? She’s noble born! Bastard, sure, but still noble born! Old fool Eudes, stuck under his own wife’s boot…”
“Seriously? Why don’t we ransom her?”
“Hah! Eudes sold her himself!”
“Think we can get a Southerner to pay extra for the blood?”
“Look at her rags! Would anyone believe you?”
Her name is Ishbell, but that’s a name she’ll only have later. On the ship, everyone calls her Eudes. Eudes, bring me that bucket! Love is conditional here, too, since you have to be one of the Sval crew to ever get a taste of it. Eudes, how are you so weak? Ishbell isn’t quite sure what you have to do to become one of the crew. Eudes, you’re sleeping on the deck tonight. Everything here is ugly and decaying, just like her. The boards a washed-out brown, her clothes a splotchy gray, the ocean a merciless foamy blue. Eudes, what’s it like being sold by your dad? Sometimes the ship comes up to dock for a while, the warriors pouring out with all their armor and weapons and magic. They come back several hours later, more miserable kids in tow. Eudes, you disgust me. Sometimes they drag the kids in a line to the market, where merchants and traders and aristocrats and slavers and all kinds of people in fancy clothes point and wave and whisper to each other. Ishbell doesn’t know what happens to the kids who get sold. Eudes, can’t you do anything right? It is the only life she’s ever known.
One day, on the way to the market, their party runs across some soldiers on patrol. The Sval crew do their best to rush the kids back to the ship, but one group gets caught in a fight. In the distance, blade clashes against blade and stray magic soars into the sky, errant jets of wind and ice and flame. Word gets out that a kid’s father had been looking for him, going against orders to lead his squad on a search. Ha, Eudes, it could never have been yours!
—
Ishbell wakes up to the sound of footsteps, and does a brief survey of her surroundings. Not that she expects anything to have changed. Dull stone walls. Iron bars. A dungeon, and her cell.
Her eyes focus on one Alexis Rosenkreuz, Royal Tutor to the Princes of Eskia. Strikingly white hair, immaculate black-and-gold outfit, a piercing intelligence, and an expert on every elemental magic there is. Nazir’s crush, though neither of the two lovebirds realize it yet. The person she had tried to frame, only to have it all fall apart as Alexis called in the connections they had with the merchants and the nobles and the commoners and the servants and apparently all of Eskia.
“Lady Ishbell, may I have a word?”
Fortunately, that question is easy. Ishbell is sitting in a prison cell.
“You may have as many as you want.”
“Thank you.”
Ultimately, the whole plan was sloppy. Framing Alexis was already Plan B — Moimir specifically wanted them dead, if possible — and Ishbell really should have anticipated their freakishly impressive combat insight and gone in with more than a ribbon. And it was her own messy handwriting that had sealed her fate — incompetent, to the very end.
Alexis tries to make small talk. It isn’t going very well.
Ishbell sits across the bars, staring at Alexis, and she imagines for a moment their roles flipped. Supposedly there’d been a period of time when they’d been confined to the dungeon too, at least before the trial got underway. She’d been too much of a coward to visit them, then. Too afraid that they would take one look at her face and piece everything together in an instant. Well, they’d pieced everything together anyway. That was pretty impressive, actually. Might as well throw them a bone and bail them out of this awkward silence.
“When shall I be extradited?”
“How did you guess?”
“I am the most valuable diplomatic asset Eskia has that Mahren wants. Of course His Grace the Lord Regent will trade me away for something he wants from the Mahrenians.”
“And… can you guess what will happen to you after we trade you away?”
“Yes, I can. They will torture me for information, and once they are satisfied, they will kill me.”
Could that have ever happened to you, Alexis? No way — they would have argued their way out their situation, no matter what. Or one of the Princes would have bailed them out; Nazir’s in love, but all three love Alexis in their own way. All else failing, Alexis would have escaped the carriage bringing them to Mahren. Didn’t they fight their way out of a carriage on their way to Eskia, too? Escaping carriages is probably their thing.
“You sound awfully calm.”
“We gambled splendidly, the Duke and I, against our fates. And we would have won, too; but fate holds weighted dice.”
“Why did you do it?”
—
The Duke Moimir tells Ishbell his name, at some point.
The Duke Moimir tells Ishbell a lot of things. He’s really excited, too — pointing at a painting on the wall, or this really big table, or this pile of books with fancy covers. When there’s nothing for him to point at, he waves his arms around. It looks kind of funny because he waves his right arm high whenever he waves his left arm low, and he ends up looking like one of those bent signposts by the road. Bent Signpost Moimir, pointing to the chandelier! Bent Signpost Moimir, pointing to this one window! Bent Signpost Moimir, pointing to a weird cloud! Actually, that cloud is pretty weird…
And it’s not just what he’s pointing at, either. He’s talking like he wants to convince her to buy something, and she knows this because it’s the same voice the traders used. Loud, booming, confident, and (probably) full of lies, words fall out of the Duke’s mouth like so many grains from a leaky bag, and the only difference this time is that she’s the customer. His fingers are aimed at all the things in his house, not at her. His confidential glances and sly winks are aimed at her, not at some other buyer. It’s a strange feeling, to be the object of so much unfamiliar attention. It almost makes Ishbell wish she’d paid more attention to the merchants and traders and aristocrats and slavers, if only to be able to copy the way they’d make the sellers stagger by nudging their chins or asking questions in low voices. Bent Signpost Moimir, a shocked look on his face! Alas, only a dream, for now. Ishbell laughs anyway.
It happens as soon as she laughs. Bent Signpost Moimir (this time his left hand is high, and his right hand low) really does look shocked, and he immediately stops his tour to gesture wildly at himself. He says three words, pointing at himself, and bows.
Ishbell doesn’t hear it. She doesn’t understand the words. She has no idea what he’s trying to sell her. She’ll learn later, of course, but in this moment she is not even listening, because in the moment Bent Signpost Moimir stops moving he is pointing out the window — he’s pointing at an field awash with color — flowers in all sorts of reds and blues and yellows and greens and purples and oranges and all the shades in between, pale and bright and muted and intense and the petals! so many different sizes and shapes, on all sorts of stems and bushes and leaves, and who did this? Did someone dump a ship-full of paint onto this field, only to accidentally have it bloom? Did some sky goddess finally tire of the sea and the waves and say this patch of grass, right here, will be my canvas? How? Why now? To what end?
…It’s too much. Way too much to process, way more than Duke Moimir’s newest slave is capable of in the moment. So she doesn’t try. She stares, she ignores his way-too-formal introduction, and she thinks that for this sight alone she will owe him for the rest of her life.
—
"Why would he want to provoke a war?"
"He had his ways to secure the trade routes to become his, after Eskia had been conquered."
"What is Duke Moimir to you, anyway? You were his slave... Shouldn’t you owe him a grudge rather?"
—
Life with Duke Moimir isn’t like any life that Ishbell knows. She has things to do, just like before. Learn the language, study history, accompany him on his walks. Compared to before, though, when her workload was never-ending, here it feels like there’s barely anything. Wake up in a bed so soft it’s like sleeping in a cloud. Eat breakfast with more food, and more variety, than she’s ever seen. Lessons where the professor sounds like he has a quota for praise and a budget for punishment, not the other way around! And then… nothing at all. Ishbell flops back on her bed in the afternoon, and at first she just sleeps through the rest of the day, but as the weeks go on the fatigue fades and she realizes that she’ll have to fill her time with something.
She tries tailing the staff, at first. She quickly realizes that they’re under instructions from Moimir not to let her do any cleaning work, and on top of that he tracks her down one day with a smile plastered on his face and tells her that she’s not a servant. A bit confusing, since she’s pretty sure that he bought her at a slave market. She still shoos away the servant assigned to her room, making sure everything is kept spotless — because being waited on everywhere is a step too far.
That leaves several hours each day that Ishbell, at last, realizes that she has to herself. So she spends her time in the garden. The gardener is an easy ally, excited to finally have someone to lecture to about the flowers, and Ishbell is a quick learner. The colors are amazing always, every little hue an act of rebellion against the drab stone walls and murky gray dusk. And each flower is its own world: it blooms in its own season. It has its own preferences when it comes to water and light. It has its own meaning; its own effect on the human body, its own contribution to Mahrenian culture. It lives, wilts, and dies on someone else’s terms, just like her.
Living like this feels a lot like waiting for the other shoe to drop — when children mess up (and they always mess up), they get punished. When the Sval captain is drunk, food becomes scarce. When it rains, you get wet. When good fortune happens, it never lasts long — so where’s the catch? What does Duke Moimir want, that’s worth making a slave girl’s every dream come true for two years running, with no end in sight?
“How are your studies coming along?”
“Er, well enough, milord.”
“Good girl. What do you think of Eskia?”
“It, uh, borders us. My father lives there?”
“Bright! Let me tell you something… the nobles there are all like your father. They squabble amongst themselves. They’re people who wouldn’t hesitate to sell their own daughter to slavers for profit — you know that, right? But the land of Eskia itself is full of riches! Ore, and diamonds, and good land, as far as the eye can see… Do you think people like that should get to sit on top of that wealth, squander it all?”
Infiltrate Eskia. Destabilize the regime. Prepare for a Mahrenian annexation. A tall order, in hindsight. But for Ishbell, who has never been good enough for anyone, these are the easiest conditions she’s ever been offered. Duke Moimir already trusts her. Why else would he be treating her so well, before she’s even done anything? All she has to do is study hard, seize chances when the time is right, and roll the dice. Who cares if she’s being used? It’s a relief to know the terms of your contract — and for a life like this, she would sign anything in the world.
—
“That is everything there is, then? You did all this for love. You regret none of it. No one but the Duke means anything to you. Not the tens of thousands of lives that might have been lost if a war actually did break out —“
“Alexis, you know the Eskian royal family as well as I do. Do you really think they would have let it come to war? Before that, they would forfeit their own lives and give the kingdom to Mahren to protect their citizens.”
“It isn't as simple as that! And because of you, the lives of these kind-hearted people would have been lost.”
“Yes.”
“Do you not care for their lives at all?”
Nazir. The second prince of Eskia. Ever eager to help anyone who might be less than nobility, always looking to dodge some responsibility or other, freedom like wind and fire. Alexis. One of the many scions of House Rosenkreuz, only the most famous magical family there is. So bright, and curious, and relentlessly kind. What would a life like theirs be like? Nazir didn’t grow up with the waves biting at his feet. Alexis’s father is on the High Council. When lighting strikes and wood creaks, does Nazir flinch? Can Alexis fall asleep? When a servant makes their bath, do they just get in? Have they ever been afraid of being left shaking in the cold? Do they ever wonder if they’ll have enough to eat? When they look in the mirror, is there a monster looking back? What do they see?
Ishbell knew — with every fiber of her body — that with one wrong step she could find herself falling back overboard: the biting cold, an endless deep, Sval nets with no escape. So when Count Eudes’ messengers first came knocking, looking for a spare heir after the good one tripped over a tree, Ishbell was relieved — relieved that she’d be able to start working on the massive task that Moimir had laid before her, hopeful that her usefulness would give him a recurring reason to not abandon her. All the preparations and etiquette-learning and rumor-spreading made it easy not to think too hard about where she stood or what she was doing — until the night the Mahrenian ambassador fell dead on the floor, Ishbell kneeling over the body with the weapon in her hands and Alexis escaping without a mark on their skin. And then it was too late to realize the extent of all the chances she’d ever missed, all the bridges she’d just burned.
Do you not care? It doesn’t matter, not anymore. Sometimes, she thinks that there couldn’t have been a better person to hand her fate to. Only hands as stained as hers could have killed Mahren’s most well-loved diplomat. Only a body as broken as hers could have stomached backstabbing someone who had treated her so well. Only a soul as useless as hers could have been sentenced to so dismal a prison as the first ten years of her life.
Sometimes, instead, she dreams. Nazir’s gentle guidance, walking her through all the million different ways she had to adjust her accent, laughing with her as she convinced him that almsgiving really was the best use of their time — never knowing that she was constantly watching his shadow, working to oust his family from the throne. If she’d been more like Alexis, someone with the birthright to converse with princes and believe in her own goodness, would she have been able to just stand by his side? Or, if she’d been more like Nazir — with the strength to laugh at her circumstances, to fly from her own expectations — would she have been able to confide in Alexis? Tell them about all her worries, ask them how she should improve her footwork? Start a garden together? Beg them to teach her magic?
Not burn up hopelessly inside as they bound in with another ridiculous grin on their face, holding up their newest batch of burn ointment that they’re just so excited for Ishbell to try, not yet wise to the fact that Ishbell has been plotting their murder the entire time?
“I do not.”
“Not even Nazir’s?”
The question is so off-base that it throws Ishbell for the first time this conversation. She feels obligated to respond somehow, honestly, and get everything out. But the thoughts in her head are spinning too fast, and she doesn’t find the words. I am tired, she manages. I wish to sleep, one more lie. Please leave. And Alexis does.