Chapter 255 Book 4 Chapter 51: Wedding Bells

Book 4 Chapter 51: Wedding Bells

++Of all the great injustices of Garamon, it is hard to find one more prominent, and yet less thought of, than the invisibility of women’s labour.++

- Professor Olgarn Vornholt of the Exytan Institute.

I needed an alibi if Backry was to be infiltrating people’s houses and stealing from them on my orders, particularly when I considered that, idiot as he was, he was more than likely to kill someone in the attempt. I doubted there would be a murder as high profile as Earl Elqarth’s himself, but I still wanted to ensure that as little doubt could fall on me as possible.

This was where the odd idiosyncrasies of human nature came to benefit me.

For me, I did not really see much special about a day of celebration. That I was in a good mood and enjoying a turn of fortune or the culmination of long-set plans did not in any way mean that I could not, for instance, have someone I did not like killed at the same time. Most seemed to think that there ought to be more separation than that, however.

It was funny how mortals could simultaneously loathe contradictions of any kind, and be so happy living with them. Tell one that there was a streak of grey between their great cosmic planes of white and black, and they were more likely to hang you than listen. Tell them that their armies were murdering by the thousand, though, and they would simply shrug and call it peace-keeping.

I did not especially care about this hypocrisy on a moral level, but I did find it useful. If people found it hard to consider that a woman might order crimes done on the day of her wedding, then I would take full advantage of that mistake.

Unfortunately, that was essentially the only advantage my wedding day actually brought. Family of relations more distant than I had ever bothered to study were gathering in Poloira for the ceremony, making the thousand-mile journey across the ocean all to watch me wear a dress, say some vows and essentially do business with the aesthetics of ceremony.

This was not the end of the horrors by any stretch.

Apparently, while it is normal for men to make do with only a sharp suit on their wedding day, the bride is expected to do the world’s best impersonation of a china doll, complete with wardrobe and enough cosmetics to kill several elephants. My mother arrived three days prior to it, took a look at what I was planning on wearing, and promptly underwent some sort of psychotic episode.

We were not on speaking terms before this. I had not actually expected her to come at all. When I first saw her, I expected some continuation of our old arguments.

Instead I was treated to something far worse; she began to fret over my appearance.

“Honestly Isabel, the best day of your life and you’re going to see to it dressed like that?”

I was so stunned that I did not even think to mention our previous conversation, just responded to the remark directly.

“It is a political marriage,” I told her. “Not especially important to me.”

My mother’s face creased over. Now that my surprise at her presence was abating, I got a better look at her. She was wearing travel clothes, her hair bound back, her legs clad in fabrics scandalously close to practical trousers rather than a dress. If there had been any one outfit for her to not wear while criticising my wedding dress, it was this one.

Apparently unknowing, or uncaring, my mother breezed past the fact and rushed over to me, taking a strand of my hair in her hands. “We need to have this taken care of, and we’re going to have to commission a proper wedding gown for you. It will cost double—triple, I would wager, given the short notice. You’ll have to just grit your teeth and fork over the sum. Take me to the wedding hall.”

Everything my mother saw seemed to have some number of microscopic, nanoscopic or, possibly, imaginary flaws, and yet the way she talked about each one made it seem as though any of them would make me the laughing stock of Garamon. By the time she had finished the first hour of her tirade, I realised that it may have been unwise to plan so much of my own ceremony when I was so uninterested and ignorant about the sorts of things that went into it.

“Three days,” she sighed. “Three…bloody days.” She looked at me then, and I got the impression she was on the brink of dredging up old arguments. I remained silent and waited for her to speak. She did, reluctantly. “You’re my oldest daughter, Isabel,” my mother said at last. “And I’m not going to see your wedding fouled up over…personal disagreements.”

And that was how Baroness Elizabeth Vornholt became my wedding planner.

She had actually come ahead of my father and younger siblings, who were all being delayed in transit on account of the Baron having only seventy five percent as many limbs as he was used to travelling with, and I soon realised how fortunate I was that my mother had opted to go ahead.

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One imperfection after another, it became clear what a social disaster my intended plans would have turned into. It would have been relieving to see them taken over by one who was so much more expert in the field than myself, except, due to the nature of weddings, my mother unfortunately needed a lot of continued involvement on my own part too.

This all came to a head on the day of the actual wedding. After being dragged around to oversee choice in cutlery, decoration, a number of minute differences between chair placement that I, in my literally superhuman intellect, could not truly comprehend the significance of and a thousand other details, the time came for my own appearance to be tended to.

Apparently, that took the form of me being squeezed into some medieval instrument of torture made largely of flowing white cloth, presumably designed to inspire a confession in accused criminals through the threat of broken ribs and asphyxiation.

While I was busy attempting to hold my internal organs in through sheer willpower, my mother sat opposite me and ordered in a group of women who wasted precisely zero time in grabbing me from all sides and beginning to twist my hair around like they were attempting to wring the neck of an especially slippery eel.

“Stay still, Isabel,” my mother chastised me.

“They are trying to—ARGH! Kill me!” I snapped, as one of them made an especially concerted effort to wrench my head off.

“They are trying to fix that bird’s nest you call a head of hair,” the Baroness countered. Her eyes flicked to the women. “Oh, yes, continue, just ignore the struggling.”

“Demons, all of you!” I roared. “Ravenous pig-devils and maniacs, how dare you—ARHG!”

To tell the truth, there was little they could do to actually injure me. My flesh was now several dozen times stronger than that of an ordinary person and these unpowered, untrained women would have had a hard enough time wounding my scalp by stabbing it with kitchen knives, let alone by simply yanking on the hair.

Still, they did not know that I was borderline invincible, and it would not do to let that fact spread on any but my own terms. The biggest danger for me was that I might injure one of them by pulling my head to one side too hard, my hair strands were superhumanly tough too after all. They could easily dislocate, break or potentially even sever the fingers of an ordinary person entirely without my meaning them to.

So I let them drag me one way and the other and resisted my natural urge to start flailing around and ward them off while they continued to nothing short of molest my scalp.

“I’ve invited a few choice guests who you ludicrously managed to miss out,” my mother told me calmly while the torture continued. I did not think she was enjoying the pain itself as much as the process of seeing it inflicted. To her, having one’s ribcage squeezed into a too-tight dress, or one’s hair compressed into a singular knot, was rather akin to an exercise. She drew satisfaction from it as much as Qaigor did the burn of well worked muscles.

I just glared at her and tried not to start hurling fireballs.

“There’s Lord Ashcombe, Viscount Hawthorn, Professor Montag, of course we can’t forget Pembroke, and then…” she just did not stop. It occurred to me that my mother may have had more noble names and identities stored in her head than most Highmages did spells.

But of course she did. She had always been the more sociable one in her marriage, my father had friends in military places and few others. That Vornholt parties and Vornholt invitations to others’ parties had been so ubiquitous was always a product of the Baroness’ silent, diligent work in upholding connections.

By the time she had finished giving her list, the women tending to my hair seemed to have given up on attempting to remove my spinal cord. My mother looked over the result and beamed.

“You look beautiful, dear. Turn her around so she can see herself in the mirror.”

They did so, and I saw that my hair had been moved around a lot.

“Well?” my mother asked.

“I look beautiful,” I said, deciding it was probably what she wanted to hear. My mother just tutted instead.

“You could at least practice patronising people enough to be good at it,” she sighed. “In any case, we’re just waiting on that gown to finish now.”

I was wearing what might be called the prototype currently. Apparently the fit was considered acceptable, regardless of how many ribs it threatened to cave in. The notion that additional bulk and pomp would be added to it actually pleased me to some extent, however. I liked having and showing wealth. My hair was not much a sign of anything, it was just strands of matter hanging from my scalp, but a dress at least demonstrated some level of material wealth.

“Who else is coming?” I asked my mother abruptly. “Is…Agrian going to be there?”

I saw in the mirror that her eyes suddenly got sad, and I spoke again before she could answer.

“Nevermind,” I said hastily. “I was just curious.”

There were still things to do after that, but it was mostly just finishing touches. My favourite part was the hour and a half my mother spent forcibly contorting Sethira into a carefully picked dress. I noted that she kept referring to her as my ‘friend’, though Garamon was alight with the stories of exactly what our relationship was. Like always, Elizabeth Vornholt was a woman inclined to pretend not to see that which she did not care for.

Then everything was ready. The hall was set up, the staff was drilled with near-military precision, and even Blakely had been rather violently squeezed into a set of attire that sacrificed at least some level of mobility and immediate killing power for the sake of aesthetics. I noted that this aesthetic was probably countered by how wearing it made his face spasm even more than usual, but my mother was still happy enough.

The first guests began arriving just half a day later.