by CJ Brightley
“So,” said Briar, when they had ordered, “how are you settling in?”
“Oh,” said Rosie, “all right.”
“Really? I know Dignified can’t be easy to work for.”
Rosie’s mouth set. “He’s a very brilliant man.”
“Indeed he is,” said Briar in the calming tone she used when someone she was negotiating with started to get aggressive. “And I admire his ethics.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s an inspiration to me, actually, part of why I decided to work for the freedom of the gnomes. How are you getting on with the gnomes, by the way?”
“Oh, the gnomes are very friendly. Especially Mister Bucket. Though they have some odd prejudices about women and machinery.”
“Yes, Hope’s told me.”
“You look very like her, you know,” said Rosie.
“So people tell us.”
“Oh, you do. Are you cousins?”
“No relation at all, as far as we know. We met completely by chance. Have you heard the story?” Briar leaned in conspiratorially and dropped her voice, glancing about, and Rosie automatically copied her. “No,” she said.
“She and I were seeing the same man. We didn’t know until Hope burst in on him and me unexpectedly.”
“That’s awful!” said Rosie, blushing scarlet.
“I know. Hope cursed him.”
“She did what?”
“Cursed the weasel, so that his little weasel was no good to him, if you know what I mean.”
Rosie looked lost.
“She made him impotent,” Briar clarified, but that didn’t clear up Rosie’s expression. “She… made him incapable of performing. Sexually.”
Rosie blushed again, though Briar suspected the older woman still had only an approximate idea of what she was talking about. Didn’t these High Silvers teach their children about this stuff? “Anyway,” she continued aloud, “the university authorities made her take it off. Against regulations to use magic on another student without their permission. She got in a lot of trouble for it. But one good thing came of it, at least, we met each other and decided we were friends.”
“You just decided?”
“More like realised. Have you ever met anyone and felt that you just fit in with them, even with all their differences?”
“No,” said Rosie quietly. “Well… perhaps.”
“Recently?” said Briar. Rosie nodded.
“Would that be Dignified, by any chance?” said Briar, having noticed her defence of him earlier.
She nodded again, not meeting Briar’s eye.
“I see. But according to Bucket, you’re not getting on very well at the moment.”
“Bucket said that?” Rosie, startled, looked Briar in the face again.
“Yes. He’s worried.”
“Well… Dignified is hard to get to know.”
“I can imagine.”
“I mean, we talk, but it’s all about mathematics and mechanics. In Dwarvish. And I’d really like to know him better, but I don’t know how.”
“As a person, or as a man?”
“I beg pardon?”
“Do you want to be his friend, or… more than that?”
Rosie’s blush was all the answer Briar needed.
“I see,” she said, thinking, it’s true, then, there’s someone for everyone. “Well, I think the first thing you need is a more experienced woman friend who you can confide in, who can give you hints about what to do.” She looked around theatrically, then pointed to herself. “Oh, here’s one.”
“You’d do that for me?” said Rosie in a small voice.
“Why not?”
“You hardly know me.”
Briar gestured that aside. “I’m fond of Dignified, in an odd way, and very fond of Mister Bucket. I’d do it for them, even if I didn’t know you at all. And you seem like someone who would be good for him.”
“Do I?” said Rosie, surprised and apparently unconvinced.
“You’re enough like him to fit, without being so like him that you can’t talk to ordinary people,” said Briar. “I think that’s a good thing.”
“But… but I’m not attractive.”
“Who says?”
At that moment, their food arrived, and Rosie didn’t answer. When plates had been arranged and cutlery deployed, Briar asked, “What do you mean about not being attractive?”
Rosie sighed. “Mother has been trying for years to push me off on some Gold. We’re not close enough to the line of descent to be counted as Gold class, you know.”
“Yes, I think Hope mentioned that.”
“Well, Mother — the money comes from Mother’s side, it’s Father who carries the name — Mother wants grandchildren who are Golds. So she invites these awful men around.”
“Awful how?”
“Shallow dandies who only want my money and can’t talk about anything but clothes and the fashionable events they wear them to,” said Rosie. She took a knife to her fish with more force than was strictly necessary. “And they say things. I’ve heard them. I have very good hearing.”
“What sort of things?”
“Things like, ‘You’d have to be desperate for money, wouldn’t you?’” said Rosie, in a constricted voice. She took a drink of water and appeared to have trouble swallowing it.
“Oh, that’s cruel. Oh, Rosie.”
“Well, it’s true. I’m not elegant, like my sister. She’s no great beauty, but at least she’s not… gawky. And all my features are too big, and I can’t do anything with my hair.” Tears stood in Rosie’s eyes.
Briar put down her knife and took her companion’s hand. “Rosie,” she said, “Dignified doesn’t care about appearances, or money, for that matter.”
“He doesn’t?”
“Have you looked at him lately?” That got a frown from Rosie, which was an improvement on tears. Briar went on, “No, but seriously, anyone further from a shallow dandy would be impossible to find. And anyway, with a little work we can highlight your best features and give you some more confidence in yourself.”
“I don’t have any best features.”
“Of course you do. Eat your meal, now, and don’t worry about anything. Auntie Briar is on the case.”
Hope, when Briar got home, wasn’t asleep yet, which marked an improvement of sorts. Dark rings still circled her eyes, though (the bruise had faded, at last), and she looked like a different woman from the cheerful one Briar had seen on her return from Gulfport the previous night.
“Darling, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“I talked to my father,” she said. “Apparently I’m part of the reason my parents don’t get on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he avoided giving me the details, but reading between the lines, he pushed her to have sex with him, she got pregnant with me, and… I assume the families made them get oathbound. That’s how it’s usually done in the islands.”
“Most places,” said Briar. “Oh, but Hope, that’s a problem between them, not you. It’s not like you did anything.”
“I know. Still, it makes a horrible sense of everything about my childhood.”
Briar put her hands on her hips. “Hope at Merrybourne,” she said, “you are not going to let your mother’s problems turn into yours. Are you?”
“Well…”
“You are not. You have lots of people who love you, not least Patient, and that is what you are going to think about. Not your mother, who, frankly, sounds as if she has more problems than an unplanned pregnancy twenty-four years ago. Right?”
“Of course, you’re right, Briar. Thanks,” said Hope. “Where were you tonight? New man?”
“Didn’t Bucket tell you?”
“I’ve been here all afternoon.”
Briar filled her friend in on Rosie.
“Rosie and Dignified?” said Hope. “I can see that, I suppose. If anyone could be with Dignified, it would be someone like her. Funny to think abo
ut, though.”
“I think we should have her round here and talk to her together, help her out a bit.”
“That’s a kind thought,” said Hope. “Tomorrow?”
“Why not?”
“I’ll ask her when I go in to the lab.”
Promptly at the twelfth deep bell on the following evening (she had inherited her respect for other people’s time from her father), Rosie fetched up in front of a smaller, plainer house than she had imagined Mage Hope living in. Of course, the mage was from a servant family, so she didn’t have inherited money, she’d made it all herself. That presumably made a difference. Which would mean that this was the kind of house Rosie could afford to live in, if it wasn’t for her parents. Hmm.
She found the downstairs door unlocked at this early-evening hour, and discovered that in fact the mage didn’t even have the whole house; it was divided into four flats. Rosie clomped up the stairs in her work boots, and Briar opened the door before she could knock.
“Come on in,” she said. “Hope’s just out getting a loaf of bread.”
There were cooking smells, pleasant ones, and a table half-set, and Briar seated her and chatted while she stirred a pot on the stove.
The door opened, and Hope walked in, her boots silent as always. “They were out of the sourdough,” she said. “Had to get plain rye. Hello, Rosie.”
Dinner was a kind of stew, a dish with which Rosie had limited experience. Her parents’ cook concentrated mostly on neat, complicated dishes, and stew was neither, certainly not as practiced by Briar. The meat was a little tough, but it was definitely a hearty meal, especially with the heavy rye bread. She sat back uncomfortably full.
“More?” said Briar.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she replied.
“You sure? You could do with a bit of feeding up.” Briar herself was a healthy… peasant, it was the only word that fit, lawyer or not.
“Leave her alone, Briar,” said Hope. “Let’s clear away, and then we can get tea and talk.”
“So,” said Briar, when they sat back down with big mugs of strong tea, “our mission is to get Dignified to notice you. I suggest dressing up as a cogwheel, in the first instance.”
Rosie shot her a glare. She didn’t like Dignified to be mocked, even by someone as kind as Briar.
“Only my humour, darling. Sorry.”
“You’re… fond of him, then?” said Hope.
“Well,” said Rosie, “I… admire Mister Dignified greatly, it is true.”
“And what does he think about you?”
Rosie thought about this. “I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “He seems to value me. As a colleague.”
“That’s not as small a thing as you might think,” said Hope, responding to Briar’s eye-roll. “And he told me he likes her.”
“When?” asked Rosie, sitting up.
“After you asked for the job, when I told him,” said Hope.
“Those were his actual words? ‘I like her’?” said Briar.
“Near as I can remember.”
“And does he like many people?”
“He doesn’t notice many people,” said Hope. “I can’t begin to fathom what goes on inside his head, but if anyone has a chance at romance with him, it would be Rosie.”
Rosie felt a small, a very small, hopeful warm feeling in her belly at this news.
“And,” the mage continued, “whatever else you might say about him, Dignified would never lie to you, betray you, or manipulate you. It’s just not in him. He’s the opposite of Faithful.” That confused Rosie; hadn’t she just said that he would never betray someone? How did that make him the opposite of faithful?
“Well, that’s a good start,” said Briar. “You have, um, better clothes than that?” She gestured at Rosie’s pragmatic working garb. “I seem to remember from the investors’ meeting last year, you were dressed quite fashionably. There was a hat.”
“My mother,” said Rosie, with some hauteur, “buys me clothes from the best shops.” Her shoulders sagged. “But I still look like a stick in a sack,” she confessed.
“Briar,” Hope said, “Dignified doesn’t notice…”
“We’re not doing it for Dignified,” said Briar. “We’re doing it for Rosie. If she doesn’t feel attractive, how’s he going to see her?”
“Fair point,” Hope conceded.
“I think we should start with your hair,” said Briar.
“My hair…” Rosie’s lips worked. “It’s never been… it’s always…”
“I daresay. I know a herbalist who makes her own shampoos.”
“Do you?” said Hope, surprised.
“I do. We don’t all wake up looking gorgeous,” said Briar. “Some of us have to work for it.”
Hope stuck her tongue out at her friend. Rosie blinked at them both, turning her eyes from one to the other. She had never seen people play at arguing before. Her parents, when they argued, did so with massive dignity, and all her arguments with her siblings were in deadly earnest.
“Then, we need to make the most of your figure,” said Briar. “Stand up.”
Rosie stood, hesitantly.
“Take your shirt off.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I want to see what we have to work with. Trousers down, too.”
Rosie blushed until her cheeks felt hotter than the stew, but unbuttoned, while Hope walked over and flicked the lock on the door. Rosie gave her a grateful, momentary smile.
“Shift,” said Briar, and she slipped her silk chemise off over her head and stood, awkwardly, in her drawers. Briar walked around her, looking her up and down.
“Well,” she said, “you have hips. Bony, but they have potential.”
Rosie stood stiffly, waiting for the ordeal to be over. The room was pleasantly warm for someone with clothes on, but she was getting goosebumps.
“And, for your weight, a surprisingly good little bust,” Briar continued. “Shoulders back over your hips, and stick your chest out. Hmm. Quality rather than quantity. All right, cover up. I think we can work with that.”
“Mistress Pintuck?” said Hope, to Rosie’s confusion.
“Exactly,” said Briar. She turned to Rosie and explained, “She’s a gnome seamstress we know. Cousin of one of the lads at the manufactory. She made Hope’s suit that she was wearing at the investors’ meeting.”
“Oh, I remember that suit!” said Rosie. “Garnet red.”
“Exactly, and beautifully cut. Mistress Pintuck will fix you up. The question is, how sexy can we get away with?”
“What?” asked Rosie.
“Dignified is strange, but he’s still a man, isn’t he?” said Briar. “New haircut and shampoo, clothes that make the most of your figure, a bit of lace to draw the eye where you want it,” she ran a hand down towards her own cleavage in illustration, “some very light cosmetics, perfume, breath herbs, lean all the way in,” she demonstrated, putting her hand on Rosie’s shoulder, “and you’ll have him sitting up and begging.”
Rosie blushed again. It seemed she was constantly red in Briar’s presence. “You really think that will work?” she asked.
“Sure of it,” said Briar. “Of course, it can’t all be on the surface, but in your case I think he already likes what’s underneath. We want to put the best surface on it we can, don’t we?”
“Um, I don’t know that I can… do all that,” said Rosie in a small voice.
“We don’t have to do it all at once. Don’t want to startle the man, after all.”
“And then what?” asked Hope. “Dignified has no idea about women. He barely remembers his mother, he spent his growing years either under a printing machine or in prison, and he never leaves the lab. We can make our Rosie into a blushing lovely rose, but he won’t know how to pluck her.”
“Is that what you call it?” said Briar.
“Hush, you.”
“Um… I don’t know much either,” said Rosie. “Sorry.”
“Has
your mother talked to you about men and women?” asked Hope.
“Not in any, um, detail.” Mostly about the importance of a good alliance, in fact.
“What do you know?”
“Well, um. I know we’re different shapes.”
“Good start,” said Briar. Hope mock-glared at her.
“And I know that we can, ah, reproduce.”
“By means of…?”
“That’s where I get a little vague,” Rosie confessed. Briar was suddenly afflicted with a severe cough, which fooled nobody.
“As it happens,” said Hope, “I have a book.”
“You do?” said Briar, with great interest.
“I do. I’ll let you read it, if you like. It’s a very… graphic book.”
“Oo,” said Briar, with undisguised eagerness.
Rosie’s blush threatened to do permanent damage to her skin. “I don’t know if I should read anything… graphic,” she protested weakly.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s also very scientific and educational. It’s by a mindhealer, the one that Patient and I are going to.”
“Why… no, sorry, none of my…”
“I have a magical curse which interferes with my ability to have relations with my gentleman-friend,” said Hope bluntly. “The mindhealer is helping us. Is helping us a lot, in fact,” and she smiled a little smile that Rosie wasn’t sure how to interpret. “The book has exercises.”
“Exercises?” said both Briar and Rosie, the latter in shock and the former eagerly.
“Step-by-step. One, two, three. Educational,” said Hope. “I’ve marked my copy…”
“I just bet you have,” muttered Briar.
“…but I’ll get you another when I see the mindhealer tomorrow.”
“So that’s what the two of you do on Threeday nights and Fourdays,” said Briar. “‘Exercises.’” Hope gave her a cool look.
“Patient comes up and stays the night on Threeday, and they spend Fourday together,” Briar said to Rosie, who looked from one to the other, confused.
“We don’t have intimate relations,” said Hope, sending Rosie into another blush. “Can’t, actually, yet, because of the curse. But we do… practical work on my problem.”
“I have no idea what that means,” said Rosie in a faint voice.
“Well, you’ll have to read the book, then, won’t you?” said Briar. “Right. When can you visit Mistress Pintuck?”