Chương 302: Excuse Me?

I dropped the privacy bubble because it's rude to hold a magically-silenced conversation right in front of your friends. I do it all the time in front of strangers and acquaintances, but in those circumstances it would be more rude not to exclude them. I looked over at my friends.

"Larianne, you could use a little help with your hair?"

"Would you be so kind?" she said stiffly. I started working on her mane while the others gathered up. Larianne's hair is ink-black, perfectly straight, very long, and extremely voluminous. She has naturally big hair, the kind that could put hairspray companies out of business. But she's also a restless sleeper, so the total sum effect of all this is that she gets an amazing amount of tangles and knots. During the school week she spends most of her homeroom period each day brushing it out carefully.

Today was particularly bad. Belisa glanced over.

"You should wrap that before you go to sleep."

"She does wrap it," Vancy said, still stifling a yawn and knuckling her eyes.

"But she tosses and turns."

"Well then she should braid it," Belisa quipped.

"I do braid it," Larianne said stiffly.

"She tosses and turns a lot," Vancy clarified.

"Does she keep you up? Is that why you're so tired?"

"Nah, Vancy sleeps like a baby," I said.

"A proverbial baby, not a real baby. Real babies never sleep through the night. Vancy's practically in a coma." Belisa looked horrified.

"Right, you told me about that, how you can see through walls."

"I can't see through walls," I corrected.

"I can sense attuned materials at a range." She turned to Vancy.

"Is it like having someone watching you sleep?" Vancy shuddered.

"Great. Now that thought is going to keep me up at night."

"As if," her roommate scoffed.

"I can't actually see them," I clarified.

"People are some of the only things I can't see, really. I can only detect people in that they displace air and are usually surrounded by fabrics. I can sense the air and the fabrics, so the gap in the middle is usually a person."

"Usually?"

"There's a few other materials I can't perceive," I said.

"Lots of animals, some plants. Diamonds, tigers, lemons. They aren't usually people-height and wearing crinoline though, so I usually assume it's a person." Elica poked Vancy's shoulder.

"Stop yawning. It's uncivil. You'll get me started."

"I think she's going to keep doing that until she gets coffee," Rinnie added. I patted my knees and stood up.

"Right, so let's just-""Nope," Elica said, hand raised palm-out.

"By carriage."

"Well let me just-""No, again."

"But the front gate is so far away!" I protested. Or whined. Elica smirked.

"You've grown far too used to flying and portals. Today you should learn to move at our pace."

"I've been moving at their pace," I said, gesturing to Vancy and Larianne.

"We'll miss breakfast entirely if I don't speed us up!"

"It would be good for you," Rinnie said.

"Builds character."

"You've got the shortest legs here," I pointed out.

"I'll be waiting on you most of all."

"This is why she threatens your life," Belisa said, nodding knowingly.

"It's not that," Rinnie retorted.

"Are you really not done yet?" Larianne asked me. I sighed.

"I've got magic powers, but I'm not a miracle worker. I'm about to suggest drastic measures." These were some very frustrating knots. The air was working like a hundred fingers, needle-fine and independently industrious, but I'm starting to find their limits. Larianne raised her talons and clicked them menacingly.

"Say 'cut'. I dare you."

"I wouldn't dream of it," I said.

"Actually," Belisa said, slowly, "could we stop by a hairdresser today?" Larianne's glare chilled my blood, and I was only the collateral damage sitting to the side.

"For me," Belisa clarified.

"I could use a change." Vancy lit up.

"Oh!" she said, looking all giddy.

"I get it! The breakup makeover!" I kept working on Larianne's hair while we walked down to the gravel-path and there to the front gates to hail a passing cab.

Vancy picked up the stream of conversation all by herself, and chattered about her favorite stylists and styles, and since she had just kind of gone through three break-ups herself then maybe she was due for a new look herself, too, and- well, she kept going, but the gist was that she was now convinced that the big mystery behind Belisa's missing year was all about a bad relationship, and that the mysterious girl with the mysterious impossible magical powers was just coming off of a bad breakup, and that solved everything.

Vancy's not dumb, but she does have the fairly widespread habit of fitting unusual discrepancies into her existing framework. And so now she's reduced a year of soullessness and lich-captivity into a nasty split and a resentful ex. She did not even seem bothered by the fact that the girl she was speaking with- well, the girl she was talking over- was invisible while they walked, her voice coming out of apparently-thin-air.

I tried not to fidget too much at the gate, but Elica was right that I need to slow down and acclimatize myself to other people's pace every so often, and Rinnie is correct that holding back a bit would build character. We got a carriage, and it followed the streets and waited at corners while I thought about how easy it is to just fly over entire blocks and never worry about traffic. Every deviation between the road's path and as-the-crow-flies was an extra needle in my pride.

"Oh finally," I gasped, as Larianne's hair finally lay straight and even.

"There has to be some way to help keep you still at night so this doesn't happen again." Larianne rolled her eyes.

"Well, short of shackling me to the bedposts-""We wouldn't threaten you with a good time," Vancy said sweetly.

"What?" Larianne recoiled. Vancy just silently grinned and gloated. I love my friends but sometimes I just don't get them. All of them confuse me in different ways. But I'm starting to suspect that Countess Vancy Tarcelle might be kinda nasty.

Even worse than the ride through the crooked streets was the commute from Skyside to Cliffside, the ancient boreholes and long-cold lava tubes that riddle the stone here, caves that have been smoothed, improved, and joined together to form continuous paths from the base of the cave up to the surface. Generations of mages and work crews have done incredible work here, it's an entire district of the city that I often forget even exists because I bypass it entirely.

The district of Stonewall started as just a commute from one half of the city to the other, but where there are commuters there are customers and where there is custom there is commerce. So the caverns and carvings here have become a thriving commercial district that holds almost all of the growth and new expansions for the entire city. Cliffside above is entirely static because urban sprawl is unseemly and the poshes living there object to sharing their city.

Skyside below is entirely static because all the floor space in the giant cavern is already owned and developed. So in between is where you find the recently-opened strip malls, the takeaway shops, and an amazing variety of grand-opening sales next to going-out-of-business sales. I try to distract myself with the view out the window and the conversation with my friends because traveling at a horse's pace is kind of killing me inside.

The road is already at an unsafe incline, averaging about a fifty-percent road grade. I learned a lot about this stuff while I was studying the right way to blow up the Fissuring cliff-side. The only way that a horse-drawn carriage can manage this is the constant presence of sigils sealed under the road itself that increase traction, reduce weight, and produce an upward force to help traffic along on the uphill climb and to slow down the slide and fall headed downhill.

Most of the way is almost a thirty-degree slope, and if that doesn't sound steep I promise it really is. And that steep incline is how we turn the entire vertical trip from Skyside to Cliffside into a mere two-mile trek. When we finally reach the restaurant that Vancy had picked out, I was stiff from sitting still. I spent three years imprisoned but a forty-five minute carriage ride is still torture.

Vancy, Larianne and Belisa all seemed fine, and of them only one of those has magical conditioning bolstering her and it's the one that is even more used to sitting still than I am. Elica was at least as cramped as I was but she refused to acknowledge that, keeping a good aristocratic stiff upper lip. Death before indignity, and all that. Rinnie on the other hand groaned and grumbled and stopped to stretch out her back right alongside me.

The driver on the other hand was just bored by it all, accepting the coins from Vancy and moving on to water and rest the horses. They had kept a trotting pace to make the distance this quickly, and charged extra for the haste. We walked inside and claimed our reservations, and checked out the menus. Just from the smells in the air I was glad that Vancy had chosen this place, even if I could resent the length of that commute. My portals are not bad enough to offset that ride.

But she had seemed to enjoy the ride, the excuse to just sit in close quarters and chat with her friends. I respect that, I like talking with all of them too. But I prefer to be at my destination when I do it. From what I've read it used to be a lot worse. Cliffside used to get all its water brought up from Skyside on wagons, vast tanks of water filled from the aqueduct. After the Fissuring, river courses changed and water tables dropped, so there was no flowing water or well-water to be had.

Now they have an artificial reservoir and wizard weather-control to keep it filled, but that took time to build.

"You're a million miles away, aren't you?" Belisa asked, nudging me.

"Only about twelve," I said, glancing back down at the menu.

"Sorry, I do that sometimes."

"She reads too much," Vancy confided in a stage whisper.

"It's true," I said, nodding.

"I was in fact thinking about books."

"What kind of books?" Belisa asked innocently.

"History, geography, and city planning," I said. Elica's head snapped around. I done goofed. We had breakfast slowly, enjoying deeply. While my roommate held forth with everything she's been reading lately about urban layouts, architectural styles, public utilities and economic effects, the rest of us just added what we could and savored the courses. By agreement we had all ordered something different from the kitchen, with a shared bread basket in the middle and a fruit assortment to go around.

I had gotten a rather sizable platter of spinach omelet with a soft white cheese mixed in and topped with chives, and I cut about half of it away into forkfuls to set on saucers and pass to the others. I traded it to Vancy in exchange for a saucer of spiced sausage medallions over a strangely sweetly-seasoned rice, and I had to admit that it was far better than it sounded, before passing that saucer along to Belisa.

The rolls in the bread basket had surprisingly large airy pockets in them when I tore one open, well-developed glutens and plenty of rise. Perfect for drizzling in clarified butter that lined the steaming pockets and soaked deep into the bread. I had a lot of undignified 'mmm!' s from those alone. Elica glared at me when they threatened to interrupt her. She did not mind when we interrupted her with questions or input, she would springboard off of those easily.

I was impressed by how much she had learned rather quickly. When someone is learning a subject, there's the stage where they struggle to form good questions, then the stage where they ask good questions and struggle to understand the answers, then the part where they understand those answers well enough to deliver a lecture about what they know but struggle to answer questions they have not prepared for.

Elica was already on the stage after that, and each time one of us asked her what something means, or what the significance was of some detail, she could not only explain it but incorporated that answer into her ongoing discussion. I am starting to suspect that Elica may have a very, very sharp intellect that has been waiting for something to interest her as much as cards and gambling does.

Her abilities at a card table make her the equal of her mother, but if she takes just as much pride in urban management, she will definitely rise above her upbringing in every way. Belisa passed me a saucer with something like a buttermilk pancake topped with a slice of sugar-glazed pear, and my sounds of delight were enough for Elica to kick me under the table. I did not care. Belisa had already been kicked twice, and she did not care either.

She was still obsessed with experiencing flavors, something she had picked up after her captivity and a year of being aware of no tastes at all. But even with the distraction of good food, she was paying attention to the lecture.

"Wait, so where are you getting the money for the windmills?"

"Oh, the windmills are the easy part," Elica said breezily.

"The gearing is already in storage, that project was almost completed when my parents abandoned the construction to pay for a new feasting-set. All it really needs is to be assembled and attached to the fan blades, and I can get sailcloth for pennies on the platinum from the west, there's a boatyard there that does decommissioning work. And with the winches I can build up from there, I can turn the old tanning fields into a shipping center to load and unload wagons faster than anyone has, and cheaper.

It could cause friction with the stevedores but I expect that the work will stay steady, we can make it up on volume when we start taking shipments for the nearby towns."

"And the extra money goes where exactly?" Elica smiled sweetly.

"That's the best part. I've got a guaranteed long-term profit that will drive the local economy for years. We'll be building railroads." I had a mouthful of pancake and pear.

"Eckthcuthe mmfh?"