New Associates

If Nythana had blood in her body, it would all be gathering in her cheeks. She was certain she would be blushing.

It was the day after her engagement was decided, and Nythana had been in the on her way to the royal library when she was accosted by the royal palace’s head maid, Alba Dulce. She’d been dragged into a room, sat down at a desk, and forced to read a book about procreation. It wasn’t as though Nythana didn’t know how it was done. She knew what pieces went where and why, but the book she’d been given went into vivid detail about all the different positions and postures that Nythana didn’t want to see other people in. Even if only in sketches.

“Breathe, Nythana,” Mycelium said. “This is just a normal part of your species’ reproductive process.”

“I don’t need to see any of this,” Nythana thought back. “My time would be better spent learning about my husband, his kingdom, and my new maids. I really don’t have time for this.”

She snapped the book closed.

“What are you doing, Princess?” Alba asked.

“King Basil knows how this works, does he not?” Nythana responded.

“Of course he does,” Alba said. “But that’s no excuse for you not understanding how it works. Therefore, you won’t be moving from this room until you’ve finished reading it.”

“Oh dear,” Mycelium said as Nythana narrowed her eyes.

Rebellious anger flared within her. Who exactly was this woman to tell her what to do?

“Be calm, Ana,” Mycelium cautioned.

“Calm?” Nythana thought back. “I outrank her in age, station, and magical abilities, and yet she looks at me the way my taskmasters would look at me while I was enslaved. I can only assume that I’m being scorned because of my inferior birth or status as an outsider. And you want me to be calm about this?”

“I know you don’t like being given commands, but you need to deal with it for the moment.”

“I refuse.”

“You’re wasting my time,” she said aloud. “Am I really so refined that this is the only thing you have left to teach me?”

Alba raised an eyebrow.

“You wish to study other topics, then?” she asked.

“I do,” Nythana said curtly.

“Ana, you just dove into her trap!” Mycelium remarked with such urgency that Nythana went rigid.

A malicious grin spread across Alba’s face. A shudder flew up and down Nythana’s spine, and she cringed back into her chair.

What in the world? she thought. What am I feeling right now? It’s not killing intent. I’ve faced down murderous intentions hundreds of times.

“If you insist, we can move on to other topics,” Alba said through her joyless smile. “Let’s begin with posture.”

Alba stepped forward. She took the book from Nythana’s hands and set it atop her head. Nythana immediately straightened out her body to prevent the book from falling off her head.

“You are to perform various activities with this book on your head. Should the book fall off, we will start again from the beginning. You and I will be here until you complete the activities perfectly. It shouldn’t be a problem for you since you don’t seem to need to sleep.”

“How does she know that?” Nythana asked inwardly.

“You’ve already lost this battle, Ana,” Mycelium informed her in reply. “She’ll have a response for anything you can think to say or do to get out of it.”

Nythana looked at Alba with a scowl, but she heeded her instructions.

“If the circumstances were different, I would never put up with this indignation,” she said inwardly.

“I think she knows that and is taking advantage of the circumstances,” Mycelium replied.

“What is this woman?” she asked Mycelium. “She’s barely half my age and nowhere near as strong, but her presence is commanding.”

“It may be because she can clearly see the weak points in your defenses and is proving herself capable of exploiting them. Your experiences with people like that haven’t been positive, so this could be a trauma response.”

“Tch. Even after a hundred years spent killing dark mages, I can’t escape my teenaged years.”

The next few hours were spent under Alba’s strict instruction repeating the actions that she commanded Nythana to perform over again each time she let the book fall. At last, after getting further in the process than ever before, a knock at the door interrupted them moments after she let the book fall from her head while pirouetting in a full circle on one leg.

“Come in,” Nythana called, grateful for the interruption for stopping Alba from nagging her.

The door opened, and in walked Daromir of all people with a woman beside him.

“And the situation goes from bad to worse,” Nythana thought as she let her form slump.

“Ah, Lord Daromir,” Alba said. “What excellent timing. The princess has just finished her lessons. Is there anything we can help you with?”

Nythana squeezed her eyes into thin slits at Daromir.

It was you that put her up to this, wasn’t it? she thought.

Daromir ignored her glare and gestured to the woman beside him.

“This is Gerenda Geschaftsfuron,” Daromir said. “She was one of the tributes from two years before yours. In the past year, she’s proven her excellent skills in business and administrative tasks, so she was put in charge of planning royal events.”

Gerenda, whose disinterested facial expressions seemed to declare she didn’t want to be there, curtseyed low before Nythana. She seemed to be in her early twenties, with light brown hair falling in waves that ended in ringlets.

“I’m thrilled to meet you, Your Royal Highness,” she said with absolutely zero excitement—or any other emotion for that matter—audible in her monotone voice. “I’ve heard stories about The Witch of the Northern Wastes my whole life, and I’ve always admired your courage and heroism in hunting down dark mages. It has been my dream to one day see you.”

“She says she’s thrilled, but she certainly doesn’t look or sound it,” Mycelium said.

“Yeah,” Nythana agreed internally. “Is she being sarcastic? That’s a lot to say for simple sarcasm, though.”

Nythana glanced to the side to see that Alba was looking at Gerenda with that squinty-eyed smile that didn’t reach deeper than the contours of her face.

I don’t think Alba likes her much either.

“You should know that Gerenda is as emotionless as they come,” Daromir stated. “But her planning and administrative skills are second to none.”

“How does she administer without emotions?” Nythana thought.

Daromir clapped his hands lightly.

“With that out of the way, I have things I must tend to,” he said. “I leave you two to get to know each other. Good day to you, Your Royal Highness.”

Daromir briskly excused himself and left the room.

“We will continue your lessons later, Your Royal Highness,” Alba said, excusing herself right after Daromir.

If her mere presence is enough to get Alba to leave, I must befriend Gerenda at all costs, Nythana thought as she found herself alone with Gerenda.

The stony silence between them that quickly became painful.

“Oh, this is uncomfortable,” she thought.

“Perhaps ask her directly about her emotionlessness,” Mycelium suggested. “If it’s something that you’ll be around all the time, it may be better to get it out of the way immediately.”

Nythana nodded and turned to Gerenda.

“What did Daromir mean when he said you’re emotionless?” she asked.

“I have no natural expressiveness in face or voice,” Gerenda said. “I have the physical capacity to make expressions, but they are noticeably forced, and forcing them is very taxing on my body and mind.”

“Does that mean you can feel emotion, but it doesn’t show on your face?” Nythana asked.

“That’s right.”

“A disability, then,” Mycelium stated.

“Were you born this way?” Nythana asked.

“Not at all, Your Royal Highness,” Gerenda said. “I was perfectly normal until a carriage accident when I was eight. Since then, my body does not show the emotions I feel.”

“A brain injury,” Mycelium stated. “Fascinating.”

And there goes Lium treating people like they’re objects of study.

“Please stop being fascinated by other people’s traumas,” she said.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Gerenda stated.

Hm?

Nythana looked at Gerenda, who stared back with total neutrality.

Was that out loud? Nythana thought. It was, wasn’t it?

“You truly need to get your habit of speaking out loud to me under control,” Mycelium said.

“Easier said than done,” Nythana thought back. “Well, I suppose the secret's been spoiled. This likely won’t be the last time this happens, so I may as well tell her the truth.”

“Wait, what are you—"

Ignoring the protests, Nythana apologized to Gerenda and briefly explained about Mycelium and why she would sometimes habitually respond aloud to what was being said directly into her mind.

“Have you ever considered that you’re a little too open about our secret?” Mycelium griped after she’d finished her explanation. Nythana sensed their irritation, but since the situation was partially their fault, she ignored it.

“A fungus sharing your body that wants to spread in the soil,” Gerenda said, still entirely monotone and expressionless.

“Yeah,” Nythana thought. “It is pretty strange to hear. Perhaps I should’ve just made an excuse.”

“You don’t say,” Mycelium snipped.

“There’s a mushroom farmer in this kingdom that may be able to help your friend,” Gerenda said, effectively silencing Nythana and Mycelium’s internal conversation. “Would you like me to introduce you to him the next time we have business in that area?”

“Huh?” they both thought together.

As soon as Gerenda’s words sunk in, Nythana lunged forward and grabbed her hands in her own with such speed that Gerenda’s body reacted with a reflexive recoil, though her face remained expressionless after the initial subdued flinch.

“Yes, please introduce us,” Nythana said.

“C-certainly,” Gerenda said, still fully monotone. “But only if you agree to do a magic display at the end of the Bachelor’s tournament.”

“You have a deal,” Nythana said.

“I’m ecstatic to hear that, Your Royal Highness…” again, the utter lack of emotion made Gerenda’s words sound sarcastic.

“Call me Nythana in private,” Nythana interrupted. “We’ll be working together for a long time now, so we should drop the formalities whenever we aren’t in public.”

“I am honored by this privilege, Nythana,” Gerenda said. “Shall we get to work? We have much to do.”

“Yes. Let’s get started.”