Fugitive, Part II
"Jason? Jason!"
His eyes flipped open. What's Siesta doing in- oh, right. He rolled off the mattress and stood up, glancing out the window. The sun was just starting to rise, but at least it was above the horizon.
"Jason!" the maid hissed again from the bed.
He looked over. Louise was still asleep, but at some point in the night she'd rolled over and glomped onto the other girl, and her face was now firmly nestled between generous breasts.
"She won't let go!" Siesta whispered, looking helpless. "When I tried to pry her off she whimpered something and grabbed me even tighter!"
He raised an eyebrow and discarded the first three and rather lewd comments that came to mind. "Hmm. She told me she has two older sisters, and she seemed devoted to the oldest, Eléonore. Maybe she used to sleep in the same bed as her sister before she came to the Academy?"
"That's fine, but she's holding tight to this chemise and it's starting to hurt!"
"Ah. Just a second." He nudged Louise's mind as hard as he could. She blinked sleepily as she started to wake.
"Cattleya? When did you-" His little mistress's sleepy mumble cut off as her gaze sharpened. She then flinched and let go of Siesta, who immediately got out of bed.
Cattleya? Not Eléonore? Interesting. But we'd better not let her get going on a rant. "We're all awake? Excellent. Time to get the day started."
"Um – how do you start the day?" the maid asked in a small voice, as she tried to adjust her apparel to be less uncomfortable.
Louise sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes. "Once I'm dressed, Jason thumps around with his exercise programme while I practice my spells until breakfast. I suppose you can do whatever you like."
"Oh." Siesta looked down. "I can't risk leaving the room to go eat. Is it alright if I clean it, while you're gone?"
Louise shrugged and nodded.
Um. "Right. Tell you what, let's do the bed first."
This suggestion made the maid look confused. "But we don't have fresh bedding yet," she protested.
Oh, shit, we hadn't thought about that part! "Hang on, are the other maids going to be bringing up bedding? Coming inside?"
"No, not until the weekend."
"Oh, okay." He sighed in relief. "Hopefully long enough to resolve all this. So Louise's bed doesn't need to have anything done with it, then?"
"That's right." Siesta nodded, but looked even more confused.
"Good." Jason went over to his stuff and moved it all to the bed. "These bags? Some of the stuff in them is very delicate, and it might not be clear what. So don't try to clean anything in them, definitely don't let them get wet, and don't let them bump into anything."
The maid didn't look any less confused, but she nodded in agreement.
Motte's retainers were much more in evidence that day, swaggering around, and after lunch Jason and Louise agreed that it would be best to stay in class that afternoon instead of leaving early to train. But after Mr. Colbert's lecture, when everyone was supposed to be practicing, the tide of murmuring gossip kept cresting until the teacher dismissed everyone early.
"I suppose we can just go back to your room and get in a little more drilling on the remaining cantrips," he suggested as they strolled out of the classroom.
She shook her head. "The other girls are all going to go bathe. I have to join them."
"Uh . . . sorry, clueless foreigner here. Why do you have to?"
Louise rolled her eyes. "Isn't it obvious? With Count Motte's interlopers around, if I disappear I must be off getting seduced by one of them."
"Oh. Okay. But you spend a whole lot of time alone with me."
"You're my familiar. It's different."
". . . Right."
"Besides, sponging off from a bucket just isn't the same as a good soak."
Jason chuckled. "Now there's a motive I don't need explained."
That got him a funny look. "If you feel the same, why don't you use the bathhouse more?"
"Because the one for the menservants sucks, and I'd apparently have to get Siesta's invite to enter the maids' bathhouse."
Louise froze.
"Besides, what I really miss is something my people call a 'shower'. Sort of an artificial waterfall, but as hot as you like." He frowned. "Actually, now that I think about it, that might be something to ask Mr. Colbert about. Be interesting to design, anyway. But it'd mean some work done on your bathroom."
She nodded, slowly. "So while I bathe, you'll-?"
"Head back to your room, I suppose. Check on everything."
Louise nodded again, although for some reason, as they parted, she did not seem entirely happy.
He'd been a little twitchy about leaving a pre-transistor individual alone all day with his phone!, and his attention was tied up in rehearsing salvage responses to the scenario-tree of potential disasters he could envision, so Jason was not precisely paying attention to what he could see until he raced into Louise's bedroom and pulled the door shut behind him, heading for the bed where . . . nothing seemed to have happened. Good!
Then Siesta gasped, and he looked up, only to find that the 'exotic slant-eyed beauty with hair of midnight silk' happened to be standing at the sink in the bathroom, cloth in hand . . . half-covered in soap and absolutely nothing else.
Jason blinked. Then he very deliberately walked over to the table, took a chair, and sat facing the other way. Was not expecting that. Was not expecting that in the slightest. Didn't mean to . . . actually, that's something we should say out loud. "Sorry for rushing in like that. Wasn't expecting . . ."
"No, it's fine!" she protested. "It's your room, not mine, and you have a right to come in no matter what I'm . . ."
Siesta trailed off, and for several moments there was an awkward silence.
"Um, I left Miss Vallière's bed alone while I cleaned the floor around it. I hope that was fine." The faint sound of cloth moving across skin resumed.
That is, cloth moving across smooth, supple-
Shut up. Not our business, not our concern, she's not our girl. Friend-zone, you fool!
But shouldn't breasts her size sag a little more?
SHUT UP!
No, seriously. They can't possibly have plastic surgery around here.
If she's young and hasn't had any children, they're probably at maximum natural firmness. Now stop thinking about it!
"Jason?"
Oh, right. Need to respond.
"Y-yes," he stammered, "that was probably fine. I'll check them out. Uh. Soon."
A few minutes later . . . "I'm dressed now."
He turned around, and indeed Siesta had donned the relatively simple dress that she'd worn to travel home in.
You know, if her get-up was as complex as what Louise wears, it would only have been courteous to offer to help her put it on-
ARGH! Quit perving!
"Um . . . I thought you spent all afternoon in class or practicing with Miss Vallière?" She sounded nervous.
Probably because we're staring. Look away!
Jason shook himself, walked back over to his luggage, and shrugged. And made sure his attention was definitely on his things, rather than on the recently-naked girl in the room. "With Count Motte here, and his men everywhere, Louise needs to be careful about where she goes. Or something. She's in the bathhouse. I, uh, came up to see how you were doing." He flushed at that last as he dug through his stuff and pulled out his phone and the solar panels.
When he turned back to Siesta she was also blushing. "I didn't have any clean clothing, and after I scrubbed everything I felt filthy, so I thought I'd clean up with the leftover water."
"That sounds sensible." The phone powered up, chirping and displaying the usual boast about his service provider. Everything seemed to be working fine, thank goodness.
She saw what he held and moved in just a bit closer. "What's that?"
"It's a device for communicating with people who are far away," Jason told her. "It's called a 'phone'."
"I've never seen a nobilum like it," she remarked. "Did Miss Vallière give it to you?"
"Oh, no, this is an example of the craftwork of my homeland. Without any other phones around, I can't use it to talk to people, but it has other uses." He checked the power level. Yeah, he hadn't actually charged it since arriving in Japan, and it was less than half-full, so he set it on standby and went to the window to set up an ad-hoc charging station. Solar charging would take quite a bit longer than plugging it in, but it wasn't like the Academy was wired for electricity. But it's a good thing we were paranoid enough to think we might pass through somewhere without reliable current.
"Other uses?" Siesta repeated.
Jason finished setting up the solar panels and nodded. "It can record images and display them. It can record sounds and reproduce them. It can play music. It has a small library of my favorite books." Which he hadn't read much in the last few years prior to graduating. No real time, and something he'd been correcting on his vacation. "It has some simple games. It can do other things, but most of that requires that it be able to contact devices that aren't available around here."
She was now staring at the phone, eyes wide in wonder. "No one has magic like that! Did you get it from the elves? Is there a spirit bound to it?"
"It's not magic, and no, it doesn't have a spirit bound to it." He shrugged. "It's something that Louise would call a 'clockwork mind', but that's not what it really is, either."
"What is it, then?"
"Hard to explain. It's . . . do you know what a lodestone is?"
She nodded.
"A lodestone points north and south, and the reason is because it's been touched by lightning. The phone uses tiny lightning storms, too small for us to notice. Well, it's not really lightning, but it's close. Anyway, the way the lightning inside the phone, um, dances? Close enough. The way the lightning dances controls what it does. Those little buttons on it tell it what dances it should be doing."
She looked skeptical at the explanation. "You use lightning that's not really lightning to . . . talk to people and play music?"
Jason chuckled. "Siesta, we use lightning that's not really lightning to do a lot of things. This use is a very recent development." He blinked. "Now that I think about it, I believe it was your people who did a lot of the development that went into phones."
She blinked in surprised. "My people? What are you talking about?"
He shrugged. "I could be mistaken, but I haven't seen anyone around here with your eyes. Or, for that matter, black hair. I assume you have a parent or grandparent from Japan."
"You know about Grandfather Takeo?" Her eyes grew wide again. "You don't look anything like him!"
"Oh, no, I wouldn't. My nation is called America. We've been strong allies and trading partners with Japan for several decades." And we don't need to bring up what things were like between the US and Japan before that. "I was actually visiting your grandfather's country when Louise summoned me to be her familiar."
He paused, then admitted, "And your name happens to mean something where I'm from: 'Afternoon nap', more or less. So now I gotta wonder if there's something in Japan that makes it easier to stumble into Tristain somehow."
"I don't know, but Grandfather had the most amazing tales to tell." Siesta looked thoughtful. "Are there really three moons in Japan?"
"No, just the one." Jason raise one eyebrow. "Trying to trick me?"
She nodded. "Grandfather always insisted there was only supposed to be one moon. I-"
Then she broke off, hesitating for a moment. "I think that you should come see his dragon temple someday."
Okay, what-? Eh, Eastern dragon symbolism, probably his grave or something. "Alright. I can do that. Someday."
Siesta nodded again. "So what other wonders did you bring with you?" she asked, in a clear bid to change the subject.
"Not much. Clothing, a few books, writing material, bedding. Oh, and each bag has a hygiene, an emergency, and a medical kit. Plus an MRE." He pulled them out and laid them on the bed. "You know, I should show these to Mr. Colbert and see what we could duplicate with magic."
"Why? What do you have?"
"Not a whole lot in terms of quantity, but there's some definite variety here.
"Toothpaste, mouthwash, and dental floss would all be good to have widely available, from what I've heard from Louise about the dental problems around here. The razors have been vital, since as far as I can tell no one's invented the razor guard yet. Combs are nice, but the idea of plastic is probably even more valuable. Deodorant, soap, shampoo and hair conditioner – thanks Mom – if there's a way to copy this stuff you girls are probably going to love it.
"As for the emergency kits? Candles, you already have those. Matches, those are handy, but I'd need to warn Mr. Colbert about phosphorus-"
"What?" Siesta interrupted.
"Um . . . the coating at the tip bursts into flame if you rub it against a rough surface. Handy for starting a fire. They use a substance called phosphorus. You can get it from urine, of all things, but I think it's easier to mine it if you know what you're looking for. Anyway, there's two different colors. White phosphorus is easier to make, but it's poisonous and burns like the flames of perdition. Red phosphorus is much safer, and that's what you use in matches. Think of it as a kind of alchemy that you don't need magic to create."
She nodded her comprehension.
"Anyway, moving on, a couple of windup flashlights. Handy, which means they're inevitably going to break after a while. Um . . . more alchemy. Wind them up and they use tame lightning to create light to see by. Two windup radios . . . they're another way to talk over distances, and because I have two of them, they should work, at least between themselves." And it's been years since we built a crystal radio receiver as a Scout, but with a little thought we should be able to remember enough to build one. Something to sketch out, anyway.
Then he looked down at the oversized radios and scowled. "They've been a complete waste of space, so far, and I wished more than once that I didn't bring them when I could have bought them alter for," shit, she wouldn't know what the Outback is, "uh, for the land I was going to visit where I might have needed them. But the same urge to prepare for everything was why I got the solar panels, which gather the lightning my phone needs, so . . ."
Jason shook his head and moved on. "These little bottles are filled with something called 'mace', it's intended for self-defense. Not much more than a couple of sprays per bottle, though, so I'll either have to get more made or save them for deserving targets.
"As for the medical kits . . . I probably should have broken these open right after I got summoned, given them to the infirmary for study. Sterile gauze, rubbing alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, betadine, bandaids, syringe, tweezers, scissors, q-tips . . . Dunno if we'll be able to duplicate the pills, but if we do they'll come in handy. That reminds me, I need to ask someone about cowpox and smallpox-"
Siesta was now staring down at the mess on Louise's bed. "Why did you have two of everything?" she broke in to ask.
"In case I lost one of my bags. Happens, sometimes. Not that I thought Japan was dangerous!" he hastened to assure her, "but it wasn't the only country I was visiting, and . . . my parents taught me to keep a kit around, just in case."
Seista's eyes widened. "Your family! Do they think you're dead?"
"By now?" Jason sighed. "Maybe. I was going to be traveling for a while, but I still communicated with them. They have to be worried about me, at least. I've been trying not to think too hard about that." He paused, then admitted. "Even facing the idea head on, I don't feel as sad about that as I think I should."
"Because you're a familiar?"
"It wouldn't surprise me if that has something to do with it. On the other hand, I have two younger brothers. Twins. They needed my parents' attention more than I did, growing up. We ended up – not at odds, but a little distant, maybe? – after I left to continue my education. Between my scholarships and my job, I didn't need any money from the family, and the Terrible Twosome were just starting to notice girls.
"We talked using our phones from time to time, and exchanged . . . letters, but even that dropped off. Nothing came between us, it was just that I was busy, and so were they. The last note I sent them was just letting them know I'd arrived in Japan safely. It's possible they won't think anything's wrong until I don't return home at the appointed time."
Siesta gave him a hopeful look. "If they don't think anything's wrong yet, could you use your phone to talk to them?"
He shook his head. "Not from here. I'm not close enough to any of the devices that my phone would need to talk to in order to talk to my parents. Although . . . if I could find a way to see an image of Japan, and send my own image to Japan . . ."
"Your image?"
"That's right. The phone doesn't talk to other devices with sound, it talks with something that's more like light. An image of me and an image of Japan . . . maybe the phone would be able to talk across the images. But . . . maybe not. If the images only sent the light that we humans can see, then the phone wouldn't be able to talk to the devices in Japan." Jason shrugged. "And I don't even know if there's a spell for sending images in the first place."
"Oh." Siesta didn't say anything else for a moment, and instead picked up one of his shirts that was still rolled up for storage. "What kind of fabric is this? It doesn't look very impressive, but up close the weave is finer than any cloth I've ever seen."
"Oh, a lot of it's cotton or nylon, which is a fabric easily made with the right alchemy. There's a silk tux that my parents gave me as a graduation present, but I'm not about to use that for daily stuff." A thought struck him. "Wait, do people use use muscle-powered looms to make clothing?"
She nodded.
"Hand-pick the cotton? Card it by hand? Spin it? Weave it? Sew it? All by hand?"
Siesta nodded through it all. "It's one of the things that's nice about working at the Academy. I get new clothing, and I don't have to sew any of it. The Headmaster can afford to hire specialized seamstresses.
"Oh." A thought stuck Jason like a thunderbolt. And then the inevitable followup, and he sagged. "Oh, damn."
"What is it?"
"Well, first, you have to understand that clothing, for my people, is very cheap."
"Is that why you have so many clothes?"
"Cheaper than that. What's here is just a few of my clothes, enough to travel with. I have a lot more, and women . . . there are jokes about women with dozens of shoes and hundreds of outfits, and a lot of them are true."
"Dozens . . . hundreds?" the maid repeated incredulously.
He nodded. "Something about needing shoes that match any given dress, and colors that go well together. Anyway, remember those engines I told Mr. Colbert about? They aren't just for trains. We use them to do a lot of things. We can use them to power looms, and set a lightning-clockwork mind to make sure the cloth is woven correctly. Half-a-day's wage for an unskilled, menial laborer is enough to buy, new, a simple shirt, or a dress, or a pair of pants." And that doesn't even get into thrift stores. Don't a lot of them have to throw out half of what's donated, because of lack of space?
Siesta rubbed the fabric of one of his t-shirts between her fingers. "Half a day's wage? As tiny as these stitches are, I don't think I'd believe you, but they're so impossibly regular. No one could sew like this." She paused. "Are Mr. Colbert's experiments the sort of thing you'd need for that?"
"Yeah. It's something I could suggest to him to try to make things better, but," Jason grimaced, "it could actually make things a lot worse for commoners."
"It could?"
"The trickiest machine involved? The one that took the longest to invent? A way to harvest cotton mechanically. And so the cotton farmers kept large numbers of slaves, and worked them to the bone to pick the cotton to feed the clothing industry." He shook his head. "Siesta, I can't prevent the current mistreatment of commoners, but I will not open the door to invite that fresh horror in."
She nodded in comprehension, eyes wide. "What will you do?"
"I don't know," he admitted. "Cheaper, better clothing would be a boon to all, but the machines used in making clothing aren't what I specialized in. I don't actually know how the harvester works. But maybe if I can puzzle it out, and introduce all five machines at once . . . it's something I need to think about for a while."
Siesta nodded again, then sighed, suddenly looking forlorn. "One bad thing about leaving the Academy was leaving all my clothing behind. And I don't have time to wash and dry my dress. I won't be able to wear anything clean until Count Motte finally leaves."
Or she could just wear our shirt that she's holding. Almost as long as Louise's nightgown, and much roomier.
Stop it, you lecherous fool. Wearing a guy's shirt is a girlfriend thing for a reason. It's taking shelter in your metaphorical territory, not to mention your scent. She's not yours. Bad idea!
But she continued to look forlorn at the prospect of wearing the same dirty outfit for days.
Dammit. "If you're tired of wearing what you've got on," Jason began diffidently, "if you like, you could wear some of my clothing for the next few days."
Siesta looked startled. Then she rubbed the shirt with one finger. "This is smoother cloth than my family could ever afford. You don't mind lending it to me?"
"It's not a problem." Liar. "Remember, where I'm from, this stuff is normal. And I will figure out how to make it possible here. Although," he started searching through the rolled-up pants, "you're not going to be able to wear my pants. They'll slide right off." Her hips might be wider than Louise's. That didn't mean they were as wide as his, even if he was doing something about it. Hell, with the inches we've lost off our waist we need our belt to hold most of our pants up these days. Finding what he was looking for, he held it up for viewing. "My swimsuit is the only pair of pants I have with a drawstring for tightening."
"'Swimsuit'?" she repeated, then giggled in disbelief. "You have clothing for swimming?"
"Yeah, my people consider it poor manners to swim naked. Especially in mixed company. So we ended up designing special clothing for swimming. Um, I'm afraid these probably won't go down much past your knees." On the other hand, his shirt was likely to end somewhere around mid-thigh, so unless he wanted a view of her legs all evening . . . No, no, she's not here for our prurient satisfaction. She gets the swimsuit.
Siesta accepted the trunks with a giggle - probably for the notion of wearing short pants - and went into the bathroom to change. He quickly turned around again.
After a minute or so: "Um, Jason?"
"Yes?"
"This 'drawstring' won't stay put. Both ends keep going back."
Ah. That would be a problem, wouldn't it? "Right. You've got the shirt on, yes?"
"Uh-huh."
He turned around, and twitched at how cute Siesta looked, standing there in his over-sized shirt and swimsuit trunks, looking at him pleadingly with large, dark eyes. Ignore it, moron. You are rescuing her, not taking advantage of her. "Okay, there's a way to tie a simple knot so that it'll stay put but come apart when you need to use the toilet or whatever. I'm guessing you don't know it. Um. Go ahead and lift up the front of the shirt to, er, just above above your belly-button."
The maid blushed, but did as she was told. Truth be told, Jason's cheeks were also burning as he knelt down and pulled the slowly-slipping swimsuit trunks up until the top was at the narrow part of her waist. Then he pulled the drawstrings tight and-
The door opened, and Siesta squeaked in alarm at the intruder.
. . .
The worst part, of course, is that we sort of have to hope that it's our little mistress that just showed up at the worst possible time.
Louise sank into the pool in one of the smaller rooms of the bathhouse until her nose was barely above the water.
As lonely as it had been at the Academy – how she missed Cattleya! – today she was glad that she'd been able to find an empty room to be by herself in. She'd stayed in the main baths long enough to make her presence known by trading jibes with Zerbst, but a bit of solitude was what she really wanted.
Except that while she was in the bathhouse, she couldn't keep an eye on her familiar while he spent time alone with that commoner maid he'd struck up a friendship with. Definitely a downside, and not one that she could easily fix, even if some of the other students did bring their familiars into the baths to groom them from time to-
Louise shook her head, quickly dispersing the half-formed thought of her familiar behind her, washing her back as-
She shook her head again, harder, as her cheeks burned at the wanton stray thought. Curse Zerbst and her lascivious schemes, for trying to taint the pure bond growing between her and Jason!
Her elation at having a spell work – and not just any spell, but the Summoning Rite, the spell that proved she wasn't an inexprimé sport, despite all her previous failures – had quickly turned to mortification when she'd realized what she'd summoned. And the cat-calls, the taunts, the accusations that she'd hired someone (as if she'd arrange for something so absurd when there were perfectly unexceptional dogs that could be trained, if she'd been that desperate to save face) had been infuriating. But at least Mr. Colbert had treated the sudden farce seriously enough to cast the spell that confirmed that the man on the ground was her summoned familiar. Even if he had cast it three times, just to be certain.
Then she'd cast the Binding Rite, and her elation had returned when she'd felt a sudden urge to place her hands on her, um, familiar's face. The impulses that it provided were a well-known part of how the Binding Rite worked, and she'd spoken the benediction of acceptance joyfully. She could do magic! All the disappointment she'd caused her parents, all the endless and futile practice she'd done over the years, all the strange exercises she'd performed as a First Form for lack of anything better to do . . . all of that was finally worth it!
But then, as if to mock her for daring to be happy, the instincts of the Binding Rite had directed her to kiss him. As if she were some commoner slut – or worse, a Zerbst – granting her favors to anyone who asked! But the urge was too strong to deny forever, and so she'd leaned in, and-
Oh. That hadn't been so bad. Not at all.
Void Above, if that's how nice it felt for a grown women to kiss a man, maybe she could understand some of Zerbst's wantonness.
Some. But that had nothing to do with the sacred bond between mage and familiar.
Besides, the kiss hadn't inflamed her, hadn't made her want to behave as lewdly as . . . as a Zerbst! Rather, she'd felt a little like home did, when everyone else was out and it was just her and Cattleya. Warm. Cared for. Happy, even.
But then he'd had to go ruin the moment by crying out in pain and collapsing. And her rival's taunt afterward-!
Louise hadn't known what to do with him – was he truly a man, or merely a spirit taking the semblance of humanity, as some took the semblance of animals? – and so she'd split the difference, keeping the straw for his bed but ordering punishment rations prepared for him the next day, planning to see how he acted. And his actions had been, for all that they were outlandish, those of a man.
Albeit tinged with resentment and rebellion. She knew from her parents' example that it was best to be firm with both familiars and commoner recruits, and if her familiar wasn't actually a soldier, he could stand to shape up like one. So she'd been firm, and he'd tested the limits, and then suddenly-
It was probably just her lingering amusement over Guiche the Bronze's peccadillo falling apart on him, but she'd decided to listen to her familiar's ideas, and somehow they'd fumbled their way to an accord. His resentment vanished – he even admitted that he was looking forward to helping her, nobody wanted to waste their time on her anymore! – and suddenly he'd been . . . well, not precisely biddable. He was inclined to asked a lot of questions, and he'd ignore her orders if he thought he knew better, like when she'd skipped breakfast to practice Empower. But she could live with such minor flaws in a familiar who proved as determined as Jason was to help her out any way he could. Especially when his idea for spellcasting, as absurdly heterodox as it was to established and proven magical practice, had ended up working for her that afternoon. So what if she'd still required days of intense practice to cast Levitate without causing an explosion? That was nothing compared to being a complete failure for years.
She'd been a bit nervous about disrobing in front of him that evening, even if she hadn't shown it, but while he'd obviously been surprised, he hadn't made any assumptions like a commoner (or even some of her less couth classmates) would have. It was one of those things that had her wondering if he might really be a spirit in mortal form after all. He certainly didn't act like a commoner, and the bits and pieces he'd dropped of where he was from were vague enough that sometimes it seemed like he was trying to translate concepts and descriptions from an incomprehensible realm of existence to something that a human could understand, and not always doing the best job of it.
Besides, if she were honest with herself, what kind of true human would reject Zerbst for her? Especially more than once?
But he ate like a man, slept like a man, used the toilet like a man . . . and when he'd hugged her that first time, well, for all that she'd been furious, it had felt a lot like when Father had hugged her to comfort her as a little girl. Except maybe a little better, in a slightly scary way. Maybe a bit like how she ought to feel when her husband embraced her, once she married.
Which was an entirely inappropriate thing to think about a commoner. On the other hand, affection towards a familiar was not only appropriate, it was entirely unremarkable unless it was taken to extremes. So letting him embrace her, and even initiating a hug herself occasionally, wasn't a problem. He was her familiar. If she didn't have him sleep in her room, if she acted like she was embarrassed by her Brimir-given companion? That would only fuel the lingering gossip that her family was attempting an outrageously audacious farce and paying well enough in both funds and favors to have the Academy go along with it.
Compared to that, an occasional hug was nothing. And they were nice, especially while she was so far away from Cattleya. She'd even grown to enjoy how Jason's hugs made her heart race a little. And she wasn't going to admit it out loud, because she was his master and it was best for her to be firm even if he'd turned out to be a better familiar than she'd have believed when she first saw him sprawled out on the ground in front of her, but every time he kissed the top of her head it made her feel warm, from the tip of her head to the bottom of her toes, like bread fresh out of the oven.
He even put up with it when she was upset and acting like a child, almost like how Cattleya would when Louise had pitched an occasional tantrum. And now Mother wasn't around to catch her and scold them both, so it was . . . but she still needed to be the best master she could be, so it didn't behoove her to make him put up with it very often. Even if being fed like a child had merited some punishment. She could finally Levitate her food properly, after all.
And on that subject . . . Louise sat up and reached for her wand. Flow still made enough of a splash to spill some water from the pool, but after the initial explosion she was able to direct the Flow as she wished, coiling the current of water she was directing around her body, cleaning herself like a noble!, and Water was the one area that Zerbst still had some trouble with, so the slut had to make do with brushes and rags like a child or a – hee-hee-hee! – a commoner, while she, the Zero, was doing it properly.
And if Jason was even a little bit right, if Zerbst was actually afraid of her, then that whole mess with him being dragged to the slut's lair was worth it. And even if it had been outrageously inappropriate, it still brought a little smile to her face to know that he'd picked her over her rival, even when enchanted with lust.
Not that she'd realized it, when he'd picked her up and carried her to their room. No, it had just seemed like Zerbst had unleashed his hidden commoner loutishness, and he wasn't calming down even once they were alone, and she knew what the overgrown cow got up to with her visitors. (Er, sort of. In general outline. Mother had made sure that she at least understood what went where, and all the reasons why that was a bad idea until she was married.) Which didn't quite explain why Zerbst was so popular, especially in the face of the disapproval of all the other noblewomen at the Academy, since Mother's explanation hadn't mentioned bosoms. Oversized or not.
And while Jason might know, the thought of asking him how bosoms and . . . that went together made her feel exceptionally shy. So she hadn't.
But he hadn't calmed down, and she wasn't going to let him do that, but then he'd kissed her and she knew she had to stop things but the longer the kiss went on the more it felt like it might not be too bad to let him take liberties-
Louise flushed and once again shook her head until the tainted thought went away. Jason's affection was just providing a happy example of how she would enjoy her husband's embraces, once she married. That was all. He'd even offered to leave, once he'd been brought to his senses, so he knew how he'd stepped over the line dividing the nobles from the commoners, how it was in danger of polluting their holy companionship. And it must have been some contagious effect from Zerbst's spell, transmitted with that kiss, that had given her the impulse to kiss him back as his punishment. Although the look of shock on his face from that had let her fall asleep with a smile on her face. Not that she could justify 'punishing' him like that again, she would not give in to the lingering residue of pollution from Zerbst's wanton, wicked, forbidden magic that would be denounced to the Crown if there was any proof . . . but it had been fun to tease Jason a little.
Pitching a tantrum after he kept her from being part of the pursuit of Fouquet hadn't been fun, though. Especially since he'd been proven right about her inability to aim once she'd started practicing. But he'd used his habit of looking at things oddly to come up with yet another useful idea, and so now she was getting better. After all, everyone knew that the Firebolt figura was so close to Ignite that it was the third Dot nearly every Fire Mage learned, after Ignite and Extinguish. So it didn't matter that her progress with Firebolt so far was precision and accuracy only. Once she finally had Ignite, the rest would follow.
It had persuaded Mr. Colbert, anyway.
Although she still felt some lingering unease over her continuing inability to cast Ignite properly. Some hedge-mages did manage to summon familiars, after all, if only after years of practice. Such as what her parents and then later the Academy had required of her. If she wasn't ever able to truly cast Dots, that's what everyone would conclude, anyway. She would not let that happen.
And while it would be nice to work this, at least, out on her own, if she still hadn't succeeded with Ignite by summer, swallowing her pride and setting Jason on the problem yet again might be called for.
But at least he'd gotten her out of having to go to that ball. Zerbst would have been impossibly smug, like last year only worse, and once again the only reason that people would have danced with her was to avoid offending her parents. Avoiding all that, spending a quiet evening practicing cantrips in the company of her familiar, had made for a far better night. (Even if it still felt a bit like running away.) And there was the upcoming visit from Princess Henrietta, finally, after being kept strictly apart following their last misadventure . . . and if she did still want to be friends, and if they were able to spend some time alone? Well, Jason surely had as good a chance of charming her as he had that dratted maid.
Who he was all alone with, and had been for however long Louise had wasted playing with the water and reminiscing.
She stood up abruptly, but was careful to maintain Flow as she stepped out of the pool. It would take longer to Flow the water off, but casting Dry on herself while she was still drilling the explosions out was not a good idea. Practicing Awaken on her familiar had been proof enough of that.
And longer it took, but not quite as long as toweling off like a commoner, and soon she'd dressed, slipped out of the bathhouse, and was making her way to the Academy.
Then a horrible thought struck her, and Louise race over to the maids' bathhouse. But no one was there, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she sped to her tower, Levitating up the center (like a noble!), and rushing to her bedroom door. Then she opened it, and:
Siesta stood in the middle of the room, lifting her shirt far enough to show her belly like a strumpet!, and her familiar had his hands around her waist!, gripping the scandalously short pantaloons! that the maid was wearing, and the realization swept over her in a cold flash that the shirt was his!, and probably the pantaloons as well, so he'd decided to take her clothes off! and dress her like a doll!, and the maid had gone along with it!
Siesta squeaked, Louise's furious gaze shot up to meet the terrified maid's pale expression, and Jason flinched before slowly turning his head to look at her. Then his mind started nudging hers, the five-mark sequence that meant [There's a good reason for this, play along and I'll explain later.]
A good reason? A good reason?! Glaring even harder, she responded with [What is going on?][Urgent][Urgent], nudging at his mind as hard as she could as she sent the codes.
His hands fumbled with something – did he have to keep pawing at the maid like that?! – but then she saw that he was tying a bow at the front of the pantaloons with a pair of cords, and when he finished that he stood up while the maid let the shirt fall down. At least her belly was covered now.
Then her asked, "Did you have a good soak?" in a mild voice as if he hadn't just been playing with his maid like a doll-!
She glared and repeated the sequences, pushing at his mind just as hard as before.
"After cleaning the room, Siesta's only outfit was dirty enough that she didn't love the idea of wearing it, and she can't exactly wash it and hang it to dry while she's stuck here. I'm letting her borrow some of my clothes until it's safe to leave."
Did he honestly think he could explain away-?! "So you needed to put them on y-yourself? Putting your h-hands all over h-her-"
"No," he interrupted, "I needed to tie the trunks off at her waist to make sure they didn't fall off."
That was-! Louise blinked. Keeping the pantaloons on didn't sound bad, but why-
Her familiar smiled wryly. "You may have noticed that clothing my size is a bit large for her."
She held him under her glare for a bit longer, then turned to scrutinize the maid a little more closely. Jason's shirt was tent-like on the commoner, and almost concealed her unfairly generous bosom. And now that the maid had stopped holding the end of the shirt up, it fell halfway to her knees. And if her calves were still on display, at least the baggy pantaloons weren't exactly showing off the maid's thighs. And her familiar had proven that the sight of calves and thighs weren't enough to inflame him beyond reason anyway. Not without Zerbst's vile little spell at work!
She still felt quite out of sorts, but finally she shook her head in resignation. "You shouldn't be sharing your clothing so easily," she muttered.
And she meant for that to be the end of it, since surely this wouldn't go on for more than a few days, but then Siesta spoke up. "Jason? Have you not let Miss Vallière wear any of your clothing yet?"
Louise's eyes widened. She, a scion of Vallière, wear the clothes of a commoner?! Although his clothes were finely woven to an absurd degree, so it wouldn't truly be like wearing commoner clothing. And sometimes she felt a little annoyed that his braies, for all that they somehow incorporated rubber to allow them to stretch to cover a range of sizes, were too large for her to use as culottes. It wasn't like he didn't have enough to share, and they looked so comfortable-!
And Jason was looking rather wand-struck by the whole notion, and she did owe him some payback for alarming her like that when she came in.
"No, he hasn't," she mused theatrically. "But if he's so free with his shirts . . ."
So saying, Louise moved over to his luggage and tilted her head, pretending to consider, playing it up for her captive audience. "Although if he has to have so many of his shirts washed, that might cause questions."
Then she stepped over to where yesterday's shirt was waiting to go down to the laundry. She picked it up and loudly sniffed it, smiling slightly behind the shirt. Jason had always smelled a little odd, but she'd quickly gotten used to him, and had even grown to like his scent. Both the mint he favored for his breath and the smell of him underneath, especially without the undertone of filth and rot other commoner men so often seemed to bear. "You didn't do your running around yesterday, so this isn't very dirty. It'll do. Here," she thrust it into his hands. "Help me change into it."
Still looking a bit stunned, he wordlessly complied. And then it was the maid's turn to gape, as Louise calmly divested herself of everything but her culottes, hose, brassiere, and undergown. That's right, she thought smugly, although she did her best not to show it too much. He's my familiar. It's fine for him to dress me, and even look at me mostly undressed.
Then he was behind her, and his shirt was descending over her, and as it settled and she pushed her arms through the sleeves it smelled like he was all around her!
"Sorry about the pantaloons," Jason muttered into her ear while still stooped over to dress her. "I swear I'll teach her to tie that forsaken knot herself before bedtime."
You'd better! But at least he wasn't entirely unaware of how his actions had looked. Louise breathed in, suddenly feeling much less out of sorts, and turned around to look up at him with a smirk and a challenging glint in her eyes. "Well?" she demanded.
He smiled back down at her, his eyes softened, and her eyes went suddenly wide as he picked her up by her waist and gave her a great big hug. "You look cute as a button," he whispered again into her ear. "Maybe I should start dressing you in my shirts every day."
She snorted in amusement. Like that would be . . . well, no, it wouldn't be appropriate, but as a notion it wasn't without its merits. Wearing his shirt and being held by him was like being hugged by him twice at the same time, and she couldn't quite bring herself to chide him for his presumption. Instead she laid her head down on his shoulder and sighed, as the last of her irritation seemed to vanish in a warm fog of contentment.
The maid had worn a stunned expression throughout all this. Finally she shook her head. "Miss Vallière is more affectionate than I'd ever realized."
Louise twitched. No, that's not-! But every moment she indulged herself in Jason's embrace gave the obvious lie to her denial, and so she slid down to stand on the floor, face flushing. "N-no, it's just . . . I miss my sister, Cattleya. Even when she's sick, she's always happy when I spend time with her."
Jason just stood there, and she stole a glance up at him. Was that a hint of regret on his face? Good. Maybe next time he'd be more careful about letting outspoken maids ruin their time together.
Brimir, and now she was all out of sorts again.
A/N:
The invention of water-powered looms was the start of the industrial revolution. In addition, it was the cause of incredible misery, because it was profitable to oppress unskilled factory workers.
Since computers eventually replace unskilled labor, Jason may decide to hold off on pushing industry until he and Mr. Colbert can reinvent computers to at least the level of punch card machines. Although, since Mr. Colbert is already experimenting with engines, there may not be much time to develop computers first. It's certain to be complicated and messy.
Note that there are five different machines that need to be working to largely automate the clothing industry. You need sewing machines, powered looms, spinning jennies, carding machines, and harvesters. If any of them have to be done by hand – well, by the early 1800s we had everything but cotton harvesters. Guess what the plantations of the Southern US did to step up and meet demand?