Chương 17: Chapter 16: Too Dangerous For Women

++Just when I was growing used to the trials of my new life, I would find some new problem or obstacle. No greater example can you find of this than with my attempting to gain entry into the Winzorth Institute. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E Isabel moved out of Agrian's office with all the haste of a frightened little girl, though as usual she did not show any of the fear that must have boiled within on her face. That somehow made him all the more guilty.

What was wrong with him, shouting at his daughter like that? It was one thing to give Agrian the Younger a talking to—he was a growing boy just a few years shy of manhood—but his little girl needed none of that. Perhaps she wouldn't be so strange if her father didn't yell at her like a damned dog. The treacherous thought was ice in the back of his mind, making his temper all the worse. Agrian looked at his desk, and found just another source of irritation in it.

The wood had been heavy ebony taken from some deep jungle in one of the colonies, a marvelous dark masterpiece that had gone splendidly with the room. It would need replacing now, he'd left a crater in the surface bigger than his own head when he slammed a fist down on it in anger. So many mistakes, so fast. Isabel had been kidnapped, she had known the terror of abduction, and yet she seemed entirely unfazed by it. Agrian reckoned that was the blissful ignorance of childhood.

That same ignorance that left her so resilient to the trauma of her ordeal was now leaving her willing to risk experiencing it all over again. The more he thought back to the conversation, the more Agrian knew his girl could simply not be trusted to leave. She was too adventurous by far, entirely ignorant as to how fragile she really was. Isabel did not want to be hurt of course, she simply couldn't understand how vulnerable she was. It was a dangerous world out there, Agrian mused.

Too dangerous by far for his daughter. No. He banished his doubts.

The meeting with my father had not, in the end, gone well, not at all. I felt that knowledge eat into me as I stormed out from it. His anger had been expected, he tended to react to most unforeseen things with rage, but I had sincerely believed he might have changed his mind when he saw how near I had come to setting myself off to Winzorth anyway.

Perhaps I should have simply gone through with my plan, actually entering the Institute and making him head there himself to draw me back—the panic of him briefly not knowing where I was before the house's staff inevitably cleared things up—would have shocked him into understanding my point about vulnerability all the more. Or not. That same panic would, in all likelihood, just have made him double down. Perhaps there was never anything I could have done?

I had played things about as well as they could have been played, the results were simply down to my father's endless stubborn streak. Sometimes victory was impossible. No. No! I felt a wave of disgust with myself for even considering that! Victory, impossible? The very notion was anathema to my existence. Lord Dread would be victorious, and she would succeed. It had already been ordained. All that was left for me was to uncover the great mystery of how my victory came about.

And for that, I would need a new approach. My mother was doing her usual business of precisely nothing, which made it easy for me to get some time to speak with her. She was in the mansion's grounds, resting in one of the large, shaded seats surrounded by a crop of young trees that I heard she had planted herself, upon first marrying my father some fifteen years ago. Unsurprisingly, she noticed my approach long before I reached her.

People with nothing but free time tended to be more aware of their surroundings, if only for want of a distraction. She smiled as I walked over, like always.

"Are you feeling better dear?" I ignored the question, mainly out of laziness, and decided to simply jump into the matter I had come to discuss.

"I do not want to stay here, mummy," I told her.

"I want to go to the Winzorth Institute with Agrian. I think I will be safer there." Sadness swept across her features, the way it always did when I pressed her to make a decision. My mother's powerlessness hung over her like a cloak, clinging to her and shifting with every move, never too far away to swiftly taint her mood with a reminder of how little she could do.

"Your father has made his decision, Isabel," she reached out to caress my cheek as she replied. My mother was always a physically affectionate creature, and I knew that she would be hurt if I flinched back from her contact, so I buried my distaste and permitted her hand to stroke me. It is not that I am entirely opposed to being touched in any way, I simply hated the way adults handled me. Handled children in general. Like we were pets to be moved around and played with as they saw fit.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author. Protesting now would only hurt my case, however.

"But you can convince him," I tried.

"Please? I am scared of staying here, and I already know that I can be gotten to easier at home than in the Winzorth Institute."

"What makes you think that?" she asked more sharply. Not angry at me, I suspected, as much as her circumstances. I knew my mother shared this particular sentiment, it was not a coincidence that I was bringing it up once more to her now. I told her what I had done in my father's study, and how easily I had done it. Watched her face twist with shock, then disbelief, then a mix of anger and awe.

"That was awful, Isabel," she told me, her voice stern but her eyes proud.

"You shouldn't have done such a thing, you've been taught better than that!" I allowed a real grin to flash forwards as I nodded.

"Yes mummy, sorry." She tried to continue looking angry for a few moments longer, then burst out into a laugh just as I did. And it was, for once, a genuine chuckle. The distance between my mother and myself was not much narrower than I felt between any other adult, she still did not, ultimately, see me as an equal, but I had long since found that she understood me more than my father or the staff. Perhaps powerlessness had given her an appreciation for powerlessness.

"I shouldn't be laughing," she said between breaths.

"Gods, Isabel! One of these days you're going to need to learn how to behave like a lady, you know?" Her expression softened a bit, sadness touching it.

"I mean that. You're clever, my love, and I know you understand twice as much as you seem content to let me and your father think, but you're still…you're still a girl. The world has expectations of you." I met her gaze and nodded, but kept my real thoughts to myself. Yes, the world has expectations of me. It expects me to kneel before the Gods. It has done that since millennia before you were born, mother.

"Can you try to persuade father anyway?" I asked her, doing that trick I had long since acquired where I fractionally widened my eyes and took on the visage of a frightened baby. This time, it did not seem to work.

"As I said, Isabel, I know you understand twice as much as you let people think. I'm sure you manipulate me constantly, but this time you've been caught out." I swallowed, and said nothing. Eventually she sighed.

"Yes, I will talk to him. After what you've told me I…well, anyway, I shall talk to him, now will you sit with me a while?"

"Why?" I asked her, rather confused at the request and eager to go and do more important things. She flinched at that, looking, for the first time, sincerely hurt.

"I haven't gotten to spend nearly as much time with you as I've always wanted, Isabel," my mother told me.

"You're always in study, or pottering around with your own hobbies and projects. Sometimes it feels like I… like I don't even have my little girl around anymore." I could see this meant a lot to her, and knew that I would have better odds of getting what I needed if I played along. Besides, I realised that my rebirth was an event that had bearing on more than just myself. My mother had lost a child when I re-entered this world.

Lost the chance to ever raise the body I inhabited, to parent it and make it grow into a person molded by her. That was the real price of my second life, paid by her rather than me. I stayed with her for a good hour or so, if only because I believe in paying back my debts.

"Are you supposed to be doing that?" Blakely asked as he saw me kneel down beside the door to my father's study, already preparing mana to make the aether listening device I had gotten so much use out of.

"Do you actually care?" I told him.

"It is not endangering me." He had not stopped my subterfuge the last time, and I was surprised to even be asked about it now. He thought about that, which was a slow and plodding process for him, before shrugging.

"Fair enough, s'long as you don't shoot anyone or anything." I did not know how he thought I would go about doing that, without a gun, but had more pressing things to concern myself with in the moment anyway.

"—could have gotten there on her own!" I heard my mother urging.

"An eight year-old girl, Agrian, and she could have gotten herself out of the mansion and halfway across Garamon."

"I would have noticed long before she reached Winzorth," my father growled back. That earned him a sharp volley of laughter from my mother.

"You wouldn't have noticed before she'd reached the edges of the Empire!" she retorted." I would have noticed before you, and even I don't think I'd have worked out what was happening in time to stop her from arriving. In all likelihood the Winzorth Institute itself would've had to tell us." It sounded as though she was truly arguing my case, which I found promising. What was less promising was the vehemence with which my father argued against it.

"You're just worrying for the sake of worrying," he snapped.

"Our daughter is fine and safe here, you know that."

"I know that she wants to leave, that she can. Isabel is clever, Agrian, do you really think you'll be able to keep her behind these walls forever? All it takes is for some outsider to spot her leaving when we don't and she could be taken all over again. Permanently this time."

"And that could happen at Winzorth!" he roared.

"It could happen easier, because there's a hundred other geniuses at that school that can all be watched at once."

"Can you name a single kidnapping incident from Winzorth?" my mother countered.

"By the Gods, Agrian, it's practically what they advertise first! Winzorth has dealt with more attempted abductions than any magician family in Garamon, than any police force in Garamon maybe. They're ready for this, they're prepared in ways you just aren't." A pause, and my father's voice came back cold and dangerous.

"Are you telling me that you trust a bunch of quill-pushing magician strangers with our daughter more than you trust your own husband?" My mother took her time before replying, and did so in a quiet tone.

"Yes, for this."

"Absurd," my father snapped.

"I can't fucking believe this!"

"Then you're a fool—" my mother's voice cut out with the sound of a sharp impact, flesh on flesh. I realised what had happened a moment later, though I could not see. Her breathing became rapid and shallow, shock destroying the tempo of her lungs. For a few moments more, it was all I heard. Then my father spoke again.

"Fine then. Fine. We'll send her off with fucking Agrian, but if anything happens…" I heard his voice draw nearer, grow louder.

"If anything happens to her, Elizabeth, I will fucking kill you."