Chapter 139: — "Erenna"

The names came up over supper, which was a mistake, because supper was the only part of the day when all three of them were sitting still and Eren had nothing to occupy his hands.

“We need names,” said Mira.

“Then I’ll take Seraphina.”

There was a pause.

“…That’s my name.”

“I’m aware. That’s why I want it.”

“You can’t have my name.”

“You’re not using it,” said Eren. “You’re being a prince for eleven days. It’s just sitting there.”

“It’s still mine—”

“It’s idle.”

“IT’S NOT A CART, EREN—”

They got there eventually.

Mira went first, because Mira wanted it over with.

“Mira.”

Silence.

“…That’s your name,” said Seraphina.

“It’s a common name.”

“It is not a common name—”

“It’s common enough.”

“I have never met another Mira. In my life. Anywhere.”

“Then you’ve had a narrow life,” said Mira, and went back to her food, and that was the end of it, because nobody was going to interrogate the assistant and everyone at the table knew it.

Seraphina took considerably longer.

She wrote three down. Crossed out two.

“Seraphel.”

Mira put her spoon down.

“That’s your name with a bit knocked off.”

“It’s a different name—”

“It’s your name with the end taken off and a new end put on.”

“That’s how names work, Mira, that’s the whole — Aldric and Alaric are different men—”

“Prince Seraphel,” said Eren, tasting it. “Lord Seraphel. Young Lord Seraphel.”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“There isn’t another way to say it.”

“Say it less.”

“Young Lord Seraphel,” said Eren, “of the — where’s he from.”

And Seraphina, without a single second of hesitation, said:

“North Aldera.”

The table went quiet.

“Where,” said Mira.

“North Aldera.”

“Where is that.”

“It’s north.”

“North of what.”

“North of Aldera,” said Seraphina.

Mira looked at her for a long moment.

“There’s a South Aldera.”

“Obviously there’s a South Aldera—”

“There’s not, though. Is there.”

“There is now,” said Seraphina, “because you’ve just asked about it, and if you ask about it someone else will ask about it, so yes. There’s a South Aldera. It’s smaller. There’s a river.”

“Seraphina—”

“There’s a river, Mira, write it down, we need to be consistent—”

“I’m not writing down a river.”

“WRITE DOWN THE RIVER.”

Eren’s name took the longest, because Eren had feelings.

“Erenna.”

“That’s your name with two letters on it.”

“It’s a feminine form—”

“It’s your name with na on the end—”

“That is literally how feminine forms work—”

“You said mine was a bit knocked off and yours is a bit added on and those are the same crime—”

“They are not the same crime, mine is linguistically defensible—”

“Neither of you,” said Mira, “has changed your name.”

They both stopped.

“I’ve changed mine,” said Seraphina.

“You’ve changed four letters.”

“That’s — “

“You’ve changed four letters, he’s added two, and I’ve changed none,” said Mira, “and I want it noted that mine is the only one that will survive contact with an actual person asking an actual question.”

She was right and they both knew it and neither of them acknowledged it, and the names stayed exactly as they were.

Prince Seraphel of North Aldera.

Erenna.

Mira.

Later, when Mira had gone to write the whole thing up properly, Eren found her on the wall outside the storehouse where the parcels were.

He sat down.

He left the gap. He always left the gap. She had noticed it two years ago and had never got used to it.

“North Aldera.”

“Don’t.”

“You invented an entire country in under a second.”

“I invented a name—”

“You invented a name, a direction, and — under interrogation, from Mira, in about eleven seconds — a second country and a river.”

“The river was necessary.”

“The river was magnificent,” said Eren. “I want to be clear that I’m not criticising. I’ve never seen anything like it. You lied so fast that a river came out.”

She looked at the yard.

“I used to be better at this,” she said.

“At lying?”

“At — ” She made a gesture that contained a market square, four coats, a fringe, an invented country and a river. “All of it. The making things up. I used to do it constantly. I made things up all day. It’s how I got through — “

She stopped.

Eren didn’t ask.

He never asked. That was the thing about him. He’d been not-asking for four years with total consistency, and she had come to rely on it in a way she had never examined.

“And then I came here,” she said, “and everything got serious, and you don’t make things up on a ridge, you report accurately or people die. And I got very good at reporting accurately.”

“You did.”

“And I forgot I was ever good at the other thing.”

The yard was empty. Somewhere behind them a door shut.

“You didn’t forget,” said Eren. “You’ve been doing it all week. You’ve been doing it constantly. The coat, the dress, the hundred people, the fringe. You worked out how to get into a house nobody’s ever got into and the method was theatre, Seraphina, you solved it with theatre—”

“That’s not—”

“That is exactly what that is.”

She didn’t answer.

She sat there in the cold with the storehouse behind her, full of parcels, containing among other things a grey wool coat that had cost an unreasonable amount of money and that she was going to keep.

“Eren.”

“Hm.”

“In eleven days I have to be extremely unpleasant to you in public.”

“I’m aware.”

“Genuinely unpleasant. In front of forty people. For as long as it takes for someone to step in.”

“I’m aware—”

“I need you to know in advance,” she said, “that none of it’s—”

“Seraphina.”

“—that it’s all—”

“Seraphina.”

She stopped.

“I know,” he said.

And then, because he could not sustain it for longer than four seconds:

“Also I’d like it on record that you’re going to be very good at it, and that I’ve thought about that, and I have concerns about myself.”

“EREN.”

“I’m being honest—”

“I hate you.”

“I know,” said Eren, comfortably, and looked at the yard.

The fitting took the whole morning and Eren complained through all of it, which Seraphina had budgeted for.

What she had not budgeted for was the nature of the complaints.

“I’ve worked it out.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ve worked out why you assigned the roles the way you did.”

“Hold still.”

“You made me the poor helpless girl,” said Eren, holding still, “and you made yourself the naughty prince—”

“That is not the phrase—”

“—which gives you two weeks of a legitimate operational reason to chase me around a market square in front of witnesses, and I want you to know that I’ve seen through it, and that I’m not angry.”

Seraphina had a pin between her teeth.

She removed it slowly.

“That’s the plan,” she said. “That’s the actual plan. That’s the plan we submitted in writing. Four pages. Mira wrote it. It got signed by someone with a rank—”

“You wrote the first draft.”

“I dictated the first draft lying on a floor—”

“On a floor,” said Eren, “at night, unprompted, from nothing. It came out of you fully formed. Nobody asked for a market square. You reached for a market square.”

“That’s called tactical thinking—”

“It’s called wanting something and finding a reason,” said Eren, “and I’ve done it myself, so I recognise the shape.”

Mira arrived at that point with the second set of alterations and immediately regretted every choice that had brought her there.

“He’s doing the thing.”

“He’s doing the thing.”

“How long.”

“Forty minutes.”

“How many times has he said naughty prince.”

“Four,” said Seraphina.

“Six,” said Eren.

“Six?”

“Two were under my breath. They count. They’re the purest ones.”

The fringe went in after midday.

She did it herself, because she was not letting anyone else near it, and because Eren’s hair was the one part of the entire operation that could not be redone if it went wrong.

Blunt. Straight across. Ending just above the eyebrow.

It took the jawline out of the equation in about four minutes, exactly as she had said it would, and she did not gloat, and Mira noticed her not gloating and understood how much it cost.

Then the sides — long, curving inward around the cheeks and jaw, the whole thing rounding out into something soft and smooth and entirely unlike anything he had ever looked like.

She stepped back.

Mira, who had been reading, looked up.

And then did not look back down.

“…Oh,” said Mira.

“Right?”

“No, I mean — oh.”

“I know—”

“He’s pretty,” said Mira, with genuine distress.

Eren, to the mirror, delighted beyond all measure: “Say that again.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Mira—”

“I withdraw it.”

“You can’t withdraw an oh—”

He would not stop looking at himself.

That was the part Seraphina found hardest to manage, because they had ten days and a schedule and a man in the mirror who kept turning his head one way and then the other.

“You’ve been at that glass twenty minutes.”

“I’m learning the face.”

“You’ve had the face.”

“I’ve had the jaw,” said Eren. “The face is new. The face is a stranger and I’d like to be introduced properly before I take her into a market square.”

Then, without any change of tone whatsoever:

“Do you want to see my boobs.”

“NO.”

“They’ve settled.”

“I don’t want—”

“They’ve settled, Seraphina, they were sitting wrong yesterday and now they’re—”

“I do not want the update.”

“Mira wants the update.”

“I have never wanted the update,” said Mira.

He got clingier as the afternoon went on, which she had also not budgeted for.

Not obviously. He simply stopped occupying the far side of rooms.

He stood closer while she pinned things. He put his chin on her shoulder to look at a list she was holding, twice, and both times said something entirely reasonable about the list while doing it. He sat next to her at the table instead of across it and did not appear to notice he had done it.

“You’re crowding.”

“There’s a wind.”

“We’re indoors.”

“It’s a residual wind,” said Eren. “It’s come in with us. It’s been a difficult day for everybody.”

The seduction question came up at fourth bell and Seraphina immediately wished it hadn’t.

“So I have to be — what’s the word.”

“Charming.”

“Charming—”

“Warm. Grateful. A bit sad. You’re not seducing anyone, Eren, you’re being rescued, that’s a completely different—”

“But I’ll have to be appealing.”

“You’ll have to be sympathetic—”

“Am I appealing.”

“Eren.”

“It’s an operational question.”

“It is not an operational—”

“Seraphina,” said Eren, entirely reasonably. “In eleven days I’m walking into a market square and my whole job is to make a man want to protect me. That’s a professional standard. I’m asking a professional whether I meet it.”

She looked at him.

The fringe. The soft rounded frame. The whole face out in the open in a way it had never been.

“…You meet it,” she said.

“Say more.”

“No.”

“Say more—”

“I’m not doing this.”

But he had found something and he was not letting it go, and forty minutes later, over food, he circled back with the air of a man who had been building.

“You like girls.”

Seraphina did not look up.

“Yes.”

Mira’s fork stopped.

“You what,” said Mira.

“I like girls.” She kept eating. “I’ve always liked girls. And boys. I like people, Mira, I’m not going to have this conversation over stew—”

“You’ve never said—”

“Nobody asked—”

“So,” said Eren, with the enormous calm of a man arriving exactly where he’d planned to, “you like me.”

“No.”

“You just said—”

“Eww,” said Seraphina.

The silence that followed was, she recognised immediately, a mistake.

Eren put his cutlery down.

“Eww.”

“That came out wrong—”

“It came out very clearly—”

“I meant—”

“Why eww,” said Eren, hand to his chest, wounded through the entire body. “Why eww, Seraphina. I’m a girl now. I’m your girl. You made me one. You picked the dress. You cut the fringe yourself—”

“THAT’S NOT—”

“You stood behind me with scissors for four minutes deciding how I should look, and now that I’m here, now it’s eww—”

“MIRA.”

“I’m eating,” said Mira.

“MIRA, HELP—”

“He’s got a point about the fringe,” said Mira.

She got him back at seventh bell, in the yard, and she took her time about it.

He was walking. She had made him walk for an hour, because the shift changed the stride and the stride was the thing people clocked from thirty feet, and he had been complaining about it for fifty-eight minutes.

“Shorter.”

“I’m walking—”

“You’re walking like a man who’s four fingers taller than me. Shorter. From the knee.”

He shortened it.

“Better.”

“This is humiliating.”

“You said that yesterday.”

“It’s renewing,” said Eren. “It renews daily. It’s a subscription.”

She watched him go up and down the yard for another minute.

Then said, conversationally:

“You’re not appealing, by the way.”

He stopped.

“…What.”

“You asked. Professionally. I’ve assessed it.” She was examining her nails. “Erenna’s appealing. Erenna’s very appealing, she’s got a lovely face and she walks like someone who’s been having a hard year, and Halven’s going to take one look at her and lose his entire afternoon.”

“And me.”

“You’re a man in a dress with a subscription to being humiliated.”

Eren stood in the middle of the yard.

“That’s the meanest thing anyone has ever said to me,” he said, with what appeared to be genuine admiration, “and you delivered it while looking at your hands—”

“Yes.”

“You’ve been holding that for three hours.”

“Four.”

“Four—”

“You said eww was operationally significant,” said Seraphina, walking off. “I’ve had four hours to think about what’s operationally significant, and I’ve come back with material.”

He caught up with her at the door and fell into step and did not say anything for about six paces, which for him was a geological age.

Then:

“Seraphina.”

“What.”

“You said Erenna’s got a lovely face.”

“I said it professionally—”

“You said it while assessing me,” said Eren, “which is worse, because it means you looked properly.”

She kept walking.

“I cut the fringe,” she said. “Obviously I looked.”

“Mm.”

“Don’t mm me—”

“I’m walking,” said Eren. “Shorter. From the knee. Exactly as instructed.”