CHAPTER 112 – To Insist Upon Herself

“S-Saphienne!”

There was no need to think.

“Oh, gods!”

There was no need to feel.

“I can’t– you’re going to make me–”

She had thought and felt too much for too long.

“Saphienne!”

Now was the moment to be.

 

* * *

 

In contrast to the day before, Saphienne was first to wake, contented as she roused into restful satisfaction. She heard birdsong outside, tasted rich humidity on the air, felt the aching warmth that suffused her where she lay on her back and cared not for anything beyond the bed — or rather, the woman with whom she shared it.

Laelansa was nuzzled into the crook of her arm, utterly expended. Faced away, she was clinging to Saphienne’s wrist as she quietly snored.

They’d fallen asleep with Saphienne coiled around her lover.

Lover! That word rang true now. Saphienne had set upon Laelansa with a ferocity that had unnerved yet compelled her beloved, possessive as she’d taken her paramour, asserting an authority to which the novice had nervously, then joyfully, submitted. She’d at last realised the raging desire sorely missing from their relationship, and with that realisation had come her certainty that she wanted Laelansa, her need to consummate that want, and – with a roar – herself.

Saphienne had made love to Laelansa, and not gently.

…Yet it had been romantic.

Why was she blushing?

Perhaps because she’d let herself be swept up in a fantasy, pretending that she was other than who and what she was; not that she’d told Laelansa about the draconic figment in which she’d revelled. What in the world had come over her — why had that broken through the misery withholding her lust?

Contemplative, Saphienne rolled over to press against the woman beside herself, trailing sensitive fingertips down her radiant skin. She felt Laelansa now: she could feel the presence of her beauty on a visceral level that was hitherto unimaginable without walking in spiritual union with Hyacinth.

There, she frowned. She hadn’t seen the spirit since she’d freed her from Parthenos… not that the dragon had really been threatening either of them. Were Saphienne to have failed to rise to the challenge placed before her, she suspected that the wyrm would’ve contemptuously relinquished the bloomkith. The grand serpent had done little more than deter the elves and spirits, only posturing in response to aggression that they’d initiated.

But no one other than Saphienne knew that.

She groaned.

Saphienne: victor over the dragon, hero of the Eastern Vale! Hero of the entire eastern woodlands, were one to take seriously last night’s drunken speeches at the revel held in her honour.

What a farce; she’d let herself become such a charlatan.

Although, to say no one else knew might be wrong. Hyacinth had been restrained within the mind of the dragon during the affair, and so might be aware that Faylar’s translation was incompetent. Were Saphienne not estranged from her, she would invoke the bloomkith to ask–

Laelansa stirred.

Saphienne grinned as she kissed the back of her head. “Good morning…”

Moaning, Laelansa tightened her hold. “…Not already…”

She giggled as she inhaled the scent of her hair. “You can sleep on… but you’ll need to let go of my arm.”

By way of protest, Saphienne’s girlfriend gripped even firmer.

“…Fine.” She settled against her affectionately, free and easy for all that she was restrained from rising. “We can enjoy the afterglow for a while; I’m in no rush to leave.”

 

* * *

 

Soon enough Laelansa fell back asleep, and Saphienne extracted herself without disturbing her. She admired the curve of her hips from a new vantage, beguiled as she admitted she was – remarkably and quite hopelessly – besotted with her body.

…And needful…

Or she would’ve been, were Laelansa not exhausted from their night, and were she not well and truly exercised.

Nevertheless, she energetically threw on the sunset house robe left behind by Taerelle, then skipped along the landing like a child, gliding down the stairs on the balls of her feet, humming tunelessly to herself as she filled the kettle then raided the pantry for strawberries.

Green tea was steeping in the pot by the time she noticed the oddity through the kitchen window.

“…What the…”

Still holding the empty cup she’d fetched out, Saphienne opened the back door and–

–Halted, astounded by the veritable thicket of flowers and blooming branches that had grown up in the garden overnight, far in excess of what Hyacinth had gifted on her eighteenth birthday, every conceivable bud represented to excess — whether native to bloomkith or woodkin, the latter on sprouted limbs that stretched eerily toward her like arms reaching from among the blossoms.

Stepping out, she turned to see the tree that comprised her dwelling was hung thickly with climbing vines, garlanded in a rainbow of petals. Venturing a little way toward the front, peering into the grove that as yet still held no other houses, she saw that the display continued there–

Being marvelled at by a large crowd, some of whom noticed her.

“…Oh no…”

As the calls for her began, Saphienne dropped her cup to dart back through the garden and into the kitchen, slamming shut the door and drawing the curtains before she risked glancing into the sitting room. That the windows there were uncovered made her wince, cursing at herself for leaving her spellbook upstairs: she could have memorised Far Hand to–

“Saphienne?”

Laelansa was calling down in wonder.

“There are flowers growing over the window…”

Acutely aware that she was dishevelled from the night they’d shared together, Saphienne shouted back from where she hid. “I know! And there’s people in the grove! Can you throw some clothes on and come down to close the curtains, please?”

“People?” She envisioned Laelansa craning to see. “Gods! There have to be hundreds–”

Saphienne had covered her face with her functional hand. “I know!”

Someone knocked on the front door.

Her newfound will to live rapidly diminishing, Saphienne stared up at the ceiling, pleading for the dragon to come back and scare her well-wishers away. When draconic intervention was not forthcoming, she did her best to adjust the inelegant robe she wore, steeling herself to endure whatever…

…Why?

Saphienne tilted her head. She stared at the tile floor, recognising but ignoring the second round of knocks that followed, preoccupied by the novel, layered calculus playing out behind her unfocused eyes, remaining so as she retrieved another cup and poured herself tea. As the door rattled once again, more insistently, she only smiled as she sipped.

“Saphienne?” Laelansa was paused on the stairs. “Should I answer, or–”

“Stay there.” She downed her tea as she stood tall, threw back her ankle-length hair as she entered the sitting room, waved up at her perplexed girlfriend as she whispered a command. “Look ravishing — and ravished.”

Her smile became a performed scowl as she opened wide the door, her left arm deliberately crossed under her bosom in subtle emphasis as she addressed the man and woman who were crowded together on her doorstep. “Do you mind?”

Identified by their thoughtless presumption, the armoured Wardens of the Wilds were taken aback to see Saphienne unkempt. “…Good morning–”

“Has another dragon arrived?”

Hailing from outside the Eastern Vale, personally unfamiliar with Saphienne, the pair were nonplussed as they regarded her. “…No–”

“Then what is so important that you’re disturbing us?”

Blushes appeared as their gazes strayed from her to Laelansa and back again, aware by the prominent staging – and her unbathed aroma – that they were intruding on intimacy. “…Saphienne, the elders of our consensus summon you to a meeting–”

She shut the door.

Laelansa was scandalised, remaining so as Saphienne joined her on the steps to steal a kiss and usher her up to the bathroom. “You’ve just told them to–”

“Yes.” Her humour was dry. “Thrilling.”

“You’ll be in so much trouble!”

“I think not.” Shrugging off her modesty as she swayed to the tub, Saphienne ran hot water from the enchanted pitcher. “I think those two idiots are going to dither outside until I reappear; or they’ll go back to whoever sent them, be reprimanded for inconveniencing me, and then someone more senior to them – probably Faylar’s mother – will be sent to wait in their stead.”

“But you ignored a summons from the consensus!” Laelansa fretted as she approached, looking innocent in the plain sundress she’d slipped on. “And from the elders!”

“You’re correct.” Saphienne spun around and perched on the edge of the bath, crossing one leg over the other. “Ordinarily, that would be the stupidest course of action imaginable. I’d be lucky if they didn’t kick in the front door on the pretence of my grossly defying the will of the consensus.”

The novice calmed. “…Ordinarily?”

Saphienne held out her hand. “Sit with me. Wash my hair, and I’ll lay it all out.”

 

* * *

 

Two years before that morning, during the interregnum between her achieving the Second Degree and being formally acclaimed as a master, Saphienne had gone for a walk in the woods with Vestaele.

“Politics,” the sorcerer declared, “attracts much commentary. What I’ll tell you today is how I’ve personally come to understand it, informed by experience. Most scholars would disagree with me, as would most active participants in the political process.”

Wary due to the subject, but trying to be open-minded, Saphienne inclined her head to her teacher. “You don’t hold the opinion of the majority in high regard, then.”

“I believe they’re misguided,” she confessed, “although differently so. Do you understand performing for an audience, versus the performance of oneself? The difference between speech that is pretending to be a certain way, and performative speech that makes one that way? Then this may surprise you: there is great overlap between the two, so much so that even the performer may not know the truth.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction? I don’t see how you can be both at once.”

“Politics invokes public opinion, and so is intertwined with ritual performance.”

Saphienne blinked. “…You’re describing it like the discipline of Invocation, which can’t be accidental…”

“Suppose, for now, that it is. What do I mean?”

Folding her arms, staring down at her black robes, Saphienne let her intuition tease out the answer as she spoke. “…This is to do with perception. People want to portray politics, and their participation in it, as though it exists in a certain way — that the political process aligns with our best hopes for it. But you imply it’s not as simple as deceiving people with a pretty lie while working with an uglier truth; people want to convince themselves as well, upholding the idea so that it upholds their image of themselves, even while they’re acting in opposition to it.”

“Good. Explain my position.”

Saphienne’s smile was wry. “You’re cynical. You don’t believe in the ideal of what politics is supposed to be, but you recognise the fiction has to be upheld. Why?”

“For more than one reason.” Vestaele pulled back the hood of her short mantle, revealing the crown braid that she’d made of her summery hair. “The self-serving reason is that being known to be cynical damages my reputation among the politically naïve. They will only trust someone whom they think believes purely, for anyone else lives in a darker, more dangerous world than they want to exist, and so must have impaired judgement — or be evil, to enact that world.”

“And your reason that isn’t self-serving?”

“Saphienne, the fiction that politics exists to further the common good exerts influence on the practice of politics that restrains the worst individuals, who’re forced to try to justify what would benefit only themselves from the perspective of benefiting all.” She smirked. “And politics should exist to further the common good… and so it must be believed to do so, even though it doesn’t.”

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Saphienne had heard the sentiment before. “We uphold what upholds us.”

“For the true believer,” Vestaele clarified, “that is the purpose of upholding a moral code through its performance. They make the world a certain way by being the person that such a world demands, and so are reinforced by their delusion. For a cynic who is intelligent enough to recognise the beneficial influence of shared beliefs, it isn’t about who one is, or how one feels about oneself, but rather how one contributes to those shared beliefs.”

“So then…” Saphienne stopped strolling. “…There are those who insist politics isn’t what you’re about to tell me, because they can’t bear to live in a world like that. Then there are those who insist because they are upholding the fiction — and they’re divided into people pretending, so as to take advantage of the first group; other people pretending, to uphold the social narrative for the good it does; and people who aren’t cleanly categorised.”

“Most aren’t.”

A trace of scorn entered Saphienne’s tone. “But you’re enlightened?”

Vestaele grinned where she stood. “I prefer ‘illuminated.’ And no, almost all of us find ourselves performing without being certain how true we are, and to whom. That is the central characteristic of politics; trying to insist that any individual participant is any one way all of the time is dangerously reductive.”

“Then you’d have me disregard any criticisms of what you’ll say, but also recognise that voicing them serves a purpose.” Saphienne resumed her journey. “Warning received. What is so corrosive to the fable of the public good?”

Vestaele went on for several minutes in silence, letting the accumulating anticipation lend gravitas to what she’d share. When the river came into view, low in the summer heat, she led Saphienne over to the shore, then sat on the bank.

There, she studied the current.

“Politics is the continuation of violence by other means.”

Saphienne raised her eyebrows as she knelt next to her master. “Go on…”

“Let us pretend we are the only two people in the woodlands.” Vestaele menaced Saphienne, making a fist. “I’m bigger than you, stronger than you, and more capable than you in every way. Where we differ in opinion about how we should behave, and differ so ardently that there can be no compromise, who triumphs?”

“…The stronger prevails.”

“And how does the stronger prevail?”

“Through wielding violence against the weak. But–”

“Listen.” Vestaele unclenched her palm. “You know I’m bigger, stronger. You know that opposing me will see you beaten — and note the dual meaning of that expression, for it’s telling. Suppose now that I’m not actually more capable in every way. What do you do?”

What came so easily to Saphienne. “I manipulate you. I convince you that doing things my way is what you really want, or that doing them your way will have terrible consequences. I appeal to what you care about — whatever that is, whether it’s your own self-interest or something else. Where I can persuade you with reason, I use reason; where I can move you with emotion, I appeal to your emotions; where the truth will suffice, I wield it as a weapon; where only a lie can prevail, I deceive you.”

“Your objection,” Vestaele supposed, “was that I have this the wrong way around. People begin with the social, and only when the social breaks down do they proceed to the physical.” Her gaze darkened. “Yet our social world that creates these norms by which we engage is, itself, founded upon violence. Should you violate our norms, such as by immediately resorting to violence to win a dispute, the Wardens of the Wilds stand ready to ‘uphold the peace,’ and will use the very same violence to repress you. Our social engagement exists in the shadow of the threat of violence, and only exists within that context.”

Reluctantly conceding it, Saphienne dwelled on the reflection of the trees on the surface before them. “I remember Master Almon teaching the theory of the social contract, wherein it’s backed by society imposing compliance on the individual. One can’t stand against many, so they abide even when they disagree. The justice supposedly comes from the contract applying equally to everyone, binding all.”

“The alternative is tyranny — the imposition of will by one unbound.”

“So I heard.” She shook her head. “In the abstract, I’ll concede that the woodlands exist in the shadow of threatened violence, and so I’ll grant you that politics is the continuation of violence. We engage in a political process built atop social norms backstopped by the threat of violence, and when it breaks down, violence is what remains.

“But even then,” she continued, “so what? How does this meaningfully inform on the practice of politics you’re so keen for me to involve myself in?”