A/N I include a digetic argument on the subject of Anno's gender and whether to call her 'him' or 'her' specifically the argument that she lives as a boy but she is not transgender; with a character arguing that they would call her 'him' if she were transgender but won't because she's not. in the case of the story there is reason for the characters to call her by male pronouns but I as a narrator outside that world do call her by female pronouns for the very same reason.
Arch-lord Weselton waited outside the Lady Elsa's cell. Delaying while he waited for Lord Hans. He passed the time educating the guards. Two large burly men, both young and foolish as any soldier deemed replaceable enough to pull twenty-four hour monitoring duty. By definition they were not needed anywhere else.
"You mustn't let her wickedness incite you to harsh behavior or let her natural female prurience tempt you to sin. She must spend this time of solitary reflection embracing the joy of becoming Lord Hans' bride. It would never do to have her distracted with thoughts of bemoaning her situation and any punishments you might rightly choose to give her. Instead report all wrongdoing you witness and Lord Hans will take the husband's role in training her."
The guards seemed confused and unhappy with this pronouncement. Neither of them had ever been advised not to discipline a prisoner. But no one would challenge the Arch-lord. Certainly not they.
"She's branked and bound, Arch-lord. I'm sure we'll have no cause to even interact with her beyond watching her scowl and weep on her pallet." One said.
"And a women on her bed of shame, branked and bound, has never tempted a god-fearing man, I take it? Attend my words and your duties and you can't go wrong, son."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
Lord Hans arrived then. "Arch-lord, why don't you venture in? There was no need to wait."
"You claim her as your bride but you wonder why I would wait on you before speaking to her, sir?" Weselton said.
"You're quite correct, of course. I apologize. Please let me show you my bride. Excuse the mess. She has turned out to require a great deal more repair and education than I originally thought." Lord Hans said.
"Perish the thought, my boy. All the men of the Imperatorial Court have a great deal of respect for you doing this on your own. A little inconvenience now to know you were personally the one who broke her spirit. She'll never look at anyone the way she looks at you when she truly realizes in her heart that she is yours as much as your boots, your bed, or your manor." Weselton said.
When they entered Lady Elsa's cell her arms were bound behind her back. Her arms were laced together in a crisscrossed single sleeve of braided rope from elbow to wrist. Her head was encased in a branks. Also called a scold's bridle, it was a cage of heavy harness leather straps which completely covered her head. A tongue of hardened leather went into her mouth over her own tongue, making it impossible to speak. The ignorant guards who saw witches behind any act of female rebellion flatly refused to be in the same room as her if she didn't wear it, for fear she would curse them. Hans only agreed because of the torment and humiliation to have the apparatus strapped tightly to her face. This particular tool had been known to induce a feeling of panic and smothering in people who had never had such fears previously just because of the combined stimuli of the heavy apparatus weighing down the head and the tongue-brace impeding breathing just enough.
"Dear Elsa," Hans began. "If you would only stop this nonsense and see reason, I could have you on a ship to my home and manor within the hour. It pains me to see you like this. You must know the more you pain me, the more pain will be returned to you in educational suffering. You clearly are too hard headed and hard-hearted to see it, but I do this for you. You must see it. It is only through a deep and enduring affection I would care so much about your prospects in this life and the well being of your immortal soul. It's this reason I work so hard to help you embrace your destiny. I am a very busy and important man. I can scarce spare these moments to talk to you, let alone the hours and days I will invest in you before I wed the woman I know I can help you become." Hans paused and stepped closer to where Elsa lay. "By our laws I am the rightful lord of all your father's holdings. His ships, his goods, his manor house. Even you and your foster mother. Perhaps I will bring her here to visit. Perhaps watching me take possession of the woman who raised you will drive home the dire straits you find yourself in."
At this Elsa began to thrash against her bonds and shout garbled threats past the tongue-brace of her bracks. Arch-lord Weselton touched Hans' arm as he stepped forward. Lord Hans offered a gesture inviting the older man to try what he will as he stepped back giving him room.
"I am-" Arch-lord Weselton began.
Elsa's jaw muscles flexed like cords and she spat the severed tongue-brace at Weselton's feet. "I know who you are weasel-spawn." She said clearly, her mouth now unencumbered. "I suggested Miss Hans might require her nanny. I'm pleased to see she agreed and sent for you. I hope you can burp her or nurse her. Change her nappy or whatever the cranky wee miss requires to get her over her current case of the naughties."
Up close Anno noticed the old man was short and stout. Broad and muscular rather than fat, but aging.
He also was clearly Uruut. His skin that Anno had first thought dusty and weathered was in fact gray and rough by nature. His hand felt like it was covered in fine sand when they clasped hands in greeting. There was also a heaviness, a firmness to his flesh. His flesh didn't feel like stone despite the sandy texture but it was clearly denser than Anno's own. It was said the Uruut were from a cold world where ice took most the water. A good thing because the natives were too dense and would only sink.
Anno was not a tall girl but Noble Stone only came to her eyebrows, though he was almost twice as broad as she.
The inside of his home seemed to have only furniture made of carved or poured stone. Some with thick rug-like covers, some just plain and bare.
Stone sat the girl at the table and sat across from her. Alb Sven sat to her left and steepled his fingers looking from Stone to Anno and back again. His face interested and calm. Anno knew he had a message for the man, but apparently he had chosen to kindly allow her to follow up on Stone's recent revelation. Since he did not immediately show any interest in jumping into his own tale, she took the proffered opportunity.
"Where do you know my father and Uncle from?" Anno asked.
"In the service of the Council of Worlds there were the Dsan Warriors and the Dando, who wielded the strength of the elements and the spirit world. Of the Conclave of Shadows only the Sailmakers traditionally have a broader facility than Dando. But the few Dsandando who share the skills of both orders are broader in scope and skill.
Well, in our time your uncle and I were the only living Dsandando. Your father was just a low counsel functionary ordered to be our envoy because of his relationship to your uncle. He followed along behind us watching. He would observe and report. Officially having authority to sanction our actions in the name of the council if we were challenged by citizens or bureaucracy in our work.
"But you say my father would be with us still if he was not so curious. What did you mean Noble?" Anno asked.
"Not at all, son. I said without curiosity he would still be around. I said 'here' but his location is immaterial. I meant 'here' as in continuing to act as your father and his position with the government. Since while the council of worlds has been suspended the last ten years. But bureaucratic functionaries always find work. But unfortunately your uncle was a dark wizard."
Anno's face went dead white and Stone gripped her bicep.
"Son, you clearly have little familiarity with our terms. Dark and light wizards have nothing to do with ethics or honor. Magic consumes and produces huge amounts of energy. Like saddling a thunderbolt. Some, like myself are energized by the power, making us live half again a normal span and more; in vibrant health throughout. A dark wizard is consumed by his own power. He is lucky to live twenty years into adulthood. Usually their flesh darkens and they may shrink a bit as if with age. Or as if they were being baked from the inside. It is this darkening and the grief of those who love them that that gives dark wizards their name. Your uncle discovered his brother, your father would have been a light wizard if he'd had the spark and he became obsessed with myths that a dark wizard could transfer his spirit to a stronger body. Without discussion, but for the greater good he was able to transfer his abilities to his brother when he was killed.
In this moment his brother screamed, released energy in a circle of radiating power and fainted.
When he awoke, unfortunately, his healer had left the room to check on another person and when she returned your father was gone. He was spotted by bystanders three different places within an hour, and then never was reliably spotted again. I certainly have my suspicions but nothing I'm going to take the time to investigate. He clearly values his anonymity. Whenever I hear legends of an unidentified saboteur doing something that should have been impossible. I like to pretend its him. Working from the shadows. But for all I know it could just be a pretty fancy with no more truth than a child's bedtime story of princesses and pirates."
"I thought you said he was dead." Anno said.
"No, I said he's not with us. And whether dead or in hiding, he is most assuredly not with us." Stone corrected. "And since he's clearly dead or in hiding, without ever having chosen to put the abilities he clearly inherited to use in the struggle of freedom, I would say even if he was here, he is no longer the man who was your father. Let alone the hero he might have been."
Arch-lord Weselton smirked at Elsa across her cell on his second visit with the foul vixen, as the lady's haughty snarl that began when the first guard entered, began to crumble as the sixth guard along with Hans and Weselton and a large long box entered her room. "You have nothing to say when you are captured. Caught red handed in reason. You have nothing to say when your loving fiancee begs you, in the name of the love you share, to come clean about your crimes. Still you say nothing when our most trusted bride trainer asks you to show some loyalty to the man who saved you. Who is willing to wed so abhorrent a woman as yourself."
"You mean your chief torturer who tried to get me to swear loyalty to the man who killed my father and seeks to force me into slavery." Lady Elsa asked.
"So dramatic, so deluded." Weselton said. "But you so dearly want to be hard done by, and I believe I can assist. I challenge you to be isolated on the grounds of the prelate for three days. At that time you might feel more appreciative toward you fiancee and your freedom."
He motioned toward the guards and they lay the box on its back and opened it.
Elsa wouldn't have really been able to think of what the shiny white box resembled but laying down and when the whole front of the thing opened on a hinge she saw it clearly looked like a coffin that had been painted with a heavy opaque white lacquer.
When the men surrounded her and prepared to lift her bodily she suddenly had an idea of what was happening her. She began to struggle and Arch-lord Weselton clapped his hands together shouting for the men to stop. They froze and when instructed to, the four who held her lay her on the floor, pinning her immobile.
"The sinful trollop made her calf quite visible with no thought to propriety." Weselton said. "But that is my own fault. I know that there is no way to get any thoughts of propriety through the sin besotted mind of a woman. I will do what I should have done before I allowed these loyal soldiers of the Imperator into the presence of this harlot. Tailors attend me." He signaled to the remaining two guards. They approached and he said. "I need her ankles and wrists bound together and her sleeves sewn to her wrists and the hem of her dress sewn to her ankles. Then you are to place her in the isolation box. Then we will bury her on the grounds."
"What, Arch-lord?" Lord Hans asked, in shock. "Surely if she is locked within the box, there is no need to bury it. There are so many unnecessary risks."
"Oh Lord Hans, it does my old heart good to see you so fond of a maiden. And it breaks my heart your kind and gentle nature has brought you to this pass. Your heart in the unfeeling claw of a she-beast. Believe me, the fact that an earthquake could crush her, or even the simple weight of the earth itself. All the things that could theoretically go wrong in fact make this more effective. She will know that it is only through the grace of God that she survives. It will always be in the back of her mind as she contemplates her sins. She will also know that I will be spending these days trying to convince you to give her up as a mistake. And if you change your mind, she will be left to contemplate her sins until God releases her. So if she is unearthed in three days time it will be you who saved her and hopefully that will be just one of the reasons she will see she owes you love and obedience."
"Please, no, it's inhuman." Elsa began to weep. Tears that became a torrent as her clothes were sewn to her flesh. Then they became long loud screams with full body thrashing that tore about half the stitches out.
Arch-lord Weselton threw a small waterskin into the box with her. "Make it last. It's all you'll have for at least three days."
The torrent of words she screamed were muffled as the box was closed and stopped being words before the box had gone far enough to go completely silent in Hans' ears.
Noble Stone sat across from Alb Sven who was gesturing quickly as the elder reacted vocally. "Who's doing what?... And where is she?... And what's he doing? This is ridiculous. Lady Elsa? Lord Hans? And this very unique and special young man. Plus you and your partner. This is ridiculous, I want no part of it. ...No, of course I'm at your disposal. I just don't want to be. There is an old saying. 'they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, naturally they became heroes." If that doesn't sum up this whole ridiculous mess, I don't believe anything could. ...You do? I should hope so. You brought this to my door the least you could do is see it through."
Alb King came through the door right then and sat down only catching the very end. "A ship? What ship? What captain?"
Sven smirked and winked at Stone and Anno, then began to sign to his partner. King's face fell. "No, no, no. I am not doing this. You bring me onto a ship that is shot out of the sky. Then you want to take me off-world again without even stopping at the Homefast and assuring we have support in continuing this quest. ...No, no, no. I know that our order supports anything we choose to do in our service to our fellow man. But your reluctance to share with even the local Homefast let alone the Elders, seems to me that you are not being completely honest. And its not the first time... Whether you told me or not, you certainly made no effort to make sure I understood."
"Well is it settled then?" Stone asked. "Your partner won't go. You cannot leave him without a formal request to be reassigned. So you can't go. The captain is your hearth brother. Does this mean none of us are moving forward."
Alb Sven looked at King out of the corner of his eye and began to form subtle slow signs with his hand held near the table.
Alb King's eyes went big and his face flushed. He jumped to his feet, "You'll get me to go? You?! You do not control me! You arrogant, reckless, thoughtless monster."
Sven quickly signed to his partner. "Obviously I have spoken about my admiration of Noble Stone. So have thousands of people I'm sure. He is a living historical treasure."
He turned to Stone. "Would you call upon my Oath of Service to accompany you, sir?"
"No!" Anno shouted, overflowing with youthful energy. Then continued with a normal tone. "I have called on your oath. I have invoked it and you have not discharged my request to accompany me to safety. I am not safe here, dear Allbrother. Not by a long trek. I am going forward offworld to someplace I am not known and might be safe to live out my time in this life. Alb Sven's plan sounds like the only plan being suggested and is more than adequate, when looked at objectively."
"I told you the Oath is not valid to incite us to commit treason." Alb King said.
"Treason, Allbrother?" Noble Stone, interrupted as Anno began to reply. "This is not treason. Not by any definition. And your own order chose not to affirm the articles that destroyed the status and hopes of young Anno's entire sex. I must admit that the fact that you are of a notoriously compassionate order yet you seem to grasp at straws in repudiating Master Anno's claim on your oath. Do you, perhaps have some sort of internal question about the veracity of the Imperial oppression of half the population."
"I have no problem with women in general or her in particular." Alb King defended himself.
"Okay, I am not an Allbrother. It is my understanding that the primary vow you take is to be of service to your fellow man. That any person who calls upon your oath may have it. Excepting the fact; you are not obligated to act as a personal servant, you are not obligated to do anything immoral; and you are not obligated to wait at beck and call for someone against the possibility they might need you. Any petitioner must have need of you presently when they invoke the vow." Stone continued.
"That's a valid summary." King said.
"Than what is your issue with Master Simian?" Stone demanded.
"I have no issue with her. She is a bit of a rapscallion, but she seems to have a good heart." King said.
"I'm tempted to say that alone gives lie to what you're saying. Anno is dressed as a male, lives as a male, uses a male name, why do you insist on loudly breaking the lad's trust every time you open your mouth?" Stone said.
"She doesn't claim to be a male. This is a situation of convenience not a mistake of birth or anything that deep." King defended himself.
"So if the lad hated his body and felt imprisoned by it you would call him 'he', but since he only feels imprisoned by his circumstance he doesn't deserve that courtesy?" Stone asked.
"That's not true at all." King protested with wounded anger.
"Then please, explain." Stone said leaning forward and looking at the Allbrother expectantly.
"Fine, Noble. Anno has my vow. I will follow him in his escape and guide, advise, and protect him to the best of my ability. Are we done now?"
Stone smirked and said, "As the lad's choice of futures is accompanying me and perhaps trying to ingratiate himself as my protege. I'm guessing you and I are far, far from 'done'."