Chương 232: Chapter 253: Apprehensions

I spent the next several hours mingling with the general public, everyone who had turned out for the trial. As usual when I started chatting with people, I was surprised over and over. And, also as usual, I was surprised in a pleasant way. It has to be weird, right, that talking to lots of folks all together keeps making me surprised by how positive the reactions are? That has to mean that my expectations are calibrated way off, right?

If the expectations you have are consistently proved wrong, it's the expectations that are wrong, obviously. And in my case, that means that I'm consistently and drastically misapprehending people's opinions of me. That misapprehension probably comes from the fact that half my social contact is aristocrat galas and salon intrigues. But chatting with the man-on-the-street of Hearstcliff is more like Broghton than Byeview. Several times I spotted Petunia and Bruce standing at a watchful distance, a little awkwardly.

Apparently there is not some Transitive Harigold Property that makes my relatives comfortable and popular with the general populace. My parents are very popular with their citizens because of their policies and actions. I seem to be even more popular with the people of the kingdom because of my actions and perhaps what I represent. But it does not seem to travel farther than that. Shame, I'd like for the Harigold house to become a sort of people's champion.

But it seems that even if Harigold is the most populist of the Great Houses, that is still some damned faint praise. The divide between the house nobles and the people who make anything of value is pretty huge. Bruce was making jokes about shamelessly being a wealthy snob, but it was all in seriousness and half in jest. As much as I would want all of my friends and relatives to be just as well-loved, enjoying a broad range of appeal, the fact remains that the silver-spoon types just don't really connect.

I can chat with the people here and ask them about their jobs, their lives, their troubles, their homes. I can ask them how they got into a life of work, why they've taken the paths they have, what might help make their troubles go away, where they live. I chat with them and we have something relatable even before we've got anything in common. I chat with them and we have relatable values. They feel like human suffering is more important than a vague principle.

They feel like stability might not be better than progress. They value economic development without asking who it is going to give advantage to. It's a very different mentality to the people I normally work with. And I won't lie, I like it better. I like hanging out with these carpenters and coopers that ask "will it make lives better?" and when I say yes, they are satisfied. They don't need to know that it will make life better for their faction more than it will make life better for other factions.

When I sit down in a circle with a cluster of cobblers, carvers and greengrocers, they want to know if people will be safe. They have tough questions for me. And there is a certain flinch response in me, a knee-jerk urge to tell them something comforting and misleading. I could do it without lying, I could give a response that they think is the answer they want. Instead, I fold my hands in my lap and look around at the ring of faces.

"Safe is not something that anyone can promise," I tell them. With a grimace, I add, "Least of all me. I know what's coming. It's not safe, not for anyone, least of all me. I can't know what I know and act like it's going to be safe. I will tell you that I'm going to do what I can, though. Because every single life is important." I let the sincerity ring in my voice. It's easy, because it's true. Even without the purely moral component, which is important, this is also a literal pragmatic truth as well.

The more people survive these catastrophes, the more likely we can foster the narrative density to turn Hearstwhile into a real world. Stopping to chat with a dozen or two people at a time, I move through the stadium. I answer a couple questions here and there, thank people for coming to support me, invite them to the big theater tomorrow, for the High Court. Handshakes, smiles, and moments of my time. If I had not had my experience in Newtown of Broghton, this would probably have freaked me out a bit.

But I have learned how to handle being around this many friendly faces, this many well-wishers. Do you know how fucking hard it is to take compliments from strangers and not be weird about it? I would not have expected that to be the hardest part of building a reputation like mine, but it has been difficult. The temptation is either to shut down and become distant, or to take it for granted and become entitled, or to take it too much to heart and get sentimental and overwhelmed.

It's really hard to navigate those waters. The people I talk to don't leave right away, they hang around and talk amongst themselves arrayed in the stadium seating. It's a big mixed forum, messages refining and propagating as we go. Gradually the crowd is thinning, but considering the trial is done for the day there's still a lot of engagement here. Every so often I break away to chat with Bruce and Petty, who are graciously standing by, but I'm putting most of my time and energy into my adoring public today.

After all, I'm gonna need all of them tomorrow, too. Petty brought me lunch, and we finally left for dinner. As soon as I left the stadium, all my energy just dropped away. I had been held up by momentum for hours, and as soon as we left I was almost ready to fall asleep right there on my feet. I handed out blackhart masks and the three of us headed back to the residence, where dinner was waiting, and the two of them chatted amiably about the day's events while I just slid into a numb silence.

We had already gotten news that the High Court would hear our case starting tomorrow morning. Short notice, but if they were willing to convene in the dead of night on the weekend for my sake, they'd be willing to make room for me on the regular schedule. All the House leaders that had been tentatively supporting me as the coalition leader were eager to see me strengthen my claim, so they were backing this.

They would see it as bettering the odds on a gamble they had already paid in on- who wouldn't take that opportunity? And while they say there's no rest for the weary, in my case it's not quite true. I used to have trouble falling asleep when I was too tired, like my own misery was keeping me too uncomfortable to be able to nod off peacefully. That doesn't happen anymore. One advantage of my condition is that I can force myself asleep by unbinding my essence.

Disconnecting consciousness from myself, I can provoke sleep no matter how keyed up, pissed off, strung out and drained away I am. So, really I never go without rest just because I'm tossing and turning. The downside from the same hand is that there is nothing that stops the real me from tossing and turning during this process. I can't get away from my own thoughts, not even in exhaustion. In a very real sense, I never get a break. There's no quiet, not ever.

I'm forgetting what it used to feel like to lay down, and then become a nothingness, and maybe some dreams, and then wake up with a fresh start and a clean slate, with an all-new day that you can fill with new thoughts and ideas. My night follows my day, my day follows my night. There is never a clean break. I may mark hours, but I never really mark days the same way that everyone else does. And so with that, I'm keeping myself busy, as much as I can.

The Harigold residence has softer and better beds than the dorms do, with better soundproofing, better shutters, better security, and much less than a thousand teen-aged girls all sharing the same building. The ceilings are higher, the windows are wider, my house colors are prominently featured, and everything smells like a good incense and the nicer brands of cleaning products. And, I've even got a room all to myself here. It's going to drive me batty.

This is the third night in a row that I've spent here at the residence and I'm seriously wondering if it would be bad form to stay at the dorms instead. If I'm not attending classes this week, is it all right for me to sleep on the premises? Maybe Elica has missed me. Wait, let me amend that. Maybe Elica has been feeling like I'm snubbing her by sleeping away from campus. She might be really annoyed that I'm flaunting my freedom to travel about and leaving her behind. That's more likely, right?

I'm grasping at straws to try to justify not staying alone. I can feel all the other people in the building. My cousins, the staff in their quarters. When I tuned my senses to it and paid attention, I could feel them all, as if they were in the room with me after all. But they were not. There was nobody but me inside these walls. Barriers and enclosures surrounding me, separating me from the world. Closed doors. Locks. A soul can't pace, not really, but mine sure wanted to try.

Even seeping half-way through the wall to hang in the night air did not really alleviate the anxieties. I slipped back into my room and roiled back and forth, before I gave up. The claustrophobia of it was bad enough. But I've also got my own worries. The magisters don't usually respond well to anyone defying them as publicly as I have, and they have thousands of ways to screw up my life using magic. I could just lose this trial, that'd be pretty bad too.

I might accidentally touch off a riot- and as much as I like having that as a threat to present against the forces of faceless authority, if it actually happened the aftermath would not be kind to me. And, if none of that is enough to screw up my nerves, there's Nathan.

I've done a good job of boxing him out- the trial takes place during the school day, he's not on anybody's witness list, even if he was called as a witness the school administration would deny his day pass, he won't have even gotten word that this was happening until the broadsheets got delivered. He's had no time to plan, a ton of obstacles, and if he did show up at the trial he'd probably just help me discredit him as the heir.

But the fact that he is indirectly involved at all has me tied up in what-if then-what. The problem with situations involving my brother is not just that something is going to go horribly wrong: it's that I can never predict how it's going to go wrong. I'm good at coping with disasters, but he blindsides me every time. Maybe I'll get lucky. Maybe he doesn't care about this. Maybe it's not a priority for him. I've never seen him actively pursuing the succession.

He doesn't seem troubled that so many people prefer me over him. He's never mentioned any plans for the future that involve being the duke. He has never acted concerned about the inheritance. It might just not be on his radar at all. And if he does turn up, I can probably just explain to him that this is a stepping-stone for me, and that I plan on handing back the succession before Mother and Father retire. Sure. Everything will be fine. And maybe the moon will come back. Gedes was still up.

I was learning that he usually was, the man only slept about five hours a night. For hours after last bell he would sit up with a candle and read, or attend his correspondence, or take notes of his day. He used to set aside some time to mend buttons or darn fabrics but every time I was around all of those things seemed to magically take care of themselves. Even his boots did not need polishing if I was around. I was tempted, sorely tempted, to send him a message, to have him come keep me company.

To guard my sleeping body, to read me a story, to just sit in this room instead of that room while he read his book, whatever. But I need to limit the number of people who know about the untethered essence. I need to stop handing out so damn many clues about my unnatural state. And, I need to not develop too much of an attachment to this man. It looks bad when a sixteen-year-old girl starts imprinting hard on a man old enough to be her grandfather.

To me, he was a valuable friend when it mattered most and I had the least. A man that saw me and cared. But, since I am trying to start rumors and legends and controversy and conflicting accounts about every part of my life except for issues of romance, infatuation and sexuality, I need to avoid all signs of impropriety no matter how remote. If I can't attend a goddamn teahouse brunch because it would stir the wrong rumors, I for sure cannot afford to act like my butler is important to me.

I cannot keep him any closer than arm's length. But at least now I have him no further than arm's length. It comforts me just to know where he is. I am never imprisoned alone if I know where he is.