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rix_scaeduHere, in response to Tuftears’ prompt is my attempt at isekai. This is not a theme I’m familiar with, so I’ve done my best. It came in at 4,453 words so it is not a short piece.
(Note: there are no silent vowels in the names in this story – ‘e’ at the end of a name is an ‘eh’ sound or the ‘e’ in ‘egg’.)
Mary was walking along the footpath, then the ground collapsed beneath her feet, and she was falling into darkness. Her head hit against something and then there was nothing....
When she woke she was almost face down on a carpet. A cream lattice pattern against a reddish-brown background filled her vision. Her clothes felt heavier than she was used to. When she pushed herself up to sitting, she found that she was wearing some sort of robe that she'd never seen before. Looking around her, she was in a personal room of some elegance and in a style that she had never seen before. She checked herself because 'a personal room of some elegance' was not a phrasing she would ever have used, but that was what had flashed through her mind, and couldn’t find any pains or discomfort anywhere. She was, however, on the floor next to a desk and chair, so she got shakily to her feet, using the chair for support when she needed it.
The desk had open books along the left-hand edge and three quarters of the way across the top. Ink bottles sat across the rest of the desk's top edge, with ink wells and both pens and brushes lined up below them. The centre of the desktop was occupied by a large square of thick, cream paper that had a complex, multicoloured pattern surrounded by a complex circular pattern drawn on it. Looking at the way the ink maintained crisp lines and didn't bleed, Mary assumed that it was very good quality paper. The textbooks were written in a script that she was certain that she had never seen before, but she could read and understand them. She tried to read one out loud and couldn't at first, but then she tried taking her brain out of the connection between her eyes and her mouth, and the unfamiliar, understandable words just flowed out of her in a voice that was half a pitch lower than her own.
She looked around the room for a mirror and didn't find one. It didn't contain a bed or a wardrobe either, and none of the drawers held clothes or anything to do with personal grooming. What the drawers did hold was both a calligraphy and a letter writing set, embroidery supplies and an intricate embroidery in progress, drawing supplies, and a number of bowls and unusual utensils. The paper on the desk was the same as the stock of calligraphy paper, while the letter paper was of a similar quality but had a seal or crest water mark in one corner. There were no electronics anywhere that she could see. The room had good natural light with windows only on one side of the room - interestingly the windows were too high set for Mary to see out of them. The room had two doors, one in the wall opposite the windows, and the other in the wall that placed the windows on her right when she faced the door.
She thought for a moment. The door opposite the windows probably led into a corridor, if you assumed that the wall with windows would be lined with rooms. She tested that theory by carefully opening that door and peering out. There was definitely an unoccupied corridor out there, and there were other doors - including one that should lead into the same room as the other door of the room she was in. Mary carefully closed the door on the corridor and considered theat other door. She took a deep breath and opened it.
The room beyond was like a gigantic walk-in wardrobe. There were two wall length racks of robes, predominantly in black, red, and white combinations that featured solid, single colours for each pattern piece, or geometric patterns. There were rows of shoes. Another rack of cloaks. The room did have another of the high set windows, but there was a thin curtain across it. The room also had another door opposite the one she'd entered by.
This next room was a bedroom. All the furniture frames were polished but unpainted black wood. The bed was not quite the size of the double beds that Mary was used to, but it was larger than any single bed she'd seen in both length and width. The pillow arrangement at the bed head suggested that it was used for a single occupant and the heavily decorated bedcover suggested opulence. Looking around the room Mary realise that it was a comfortable room, but it was also decorated to make a statement about the occupant's power. Unless, of course, someone had decorated it to show their power over the occupant. The room had two mirrors - one was a large mirror set above a combination dressing and makeup table while the other was a full-length mirror, off set from the other so that someone could not stand between the two and see themselves reflected off into eternity in two directions. Neither mirror would reflect someone in the bed.
Mary sat at the table and looked at herself in the mirror. The face before her was covered in what looked like white maquillage. Her eyes were lined with black, her eyebrows had been painted on in black while ignoring the natural brow she could see beneath the maquillage, and something had darkened her eyelashes, while her lips, upper eyelids, and part of the space between the upper eyelid and her brow were painted red. Her hair was black with three red stripes in it, running backwards from her brow. The hair had been arranged so that straight black bangs framed her face, and the rest of her hair was pulled back to form a combination topknot/bun at the back of her head. Someone else had probably arranged the hair because the three red lines somehow remained straight all the way back. On closer inspection it seemed that neither the red nor the black hair had been dyed. The entire effect looked like her rather vague idea of a kabuki mask.
One thing that Mary was certain of was that the face under the maquillage was not hers.
She simply sat there and looked at the reflection for a while, then she got up and started searching for clues to who she was.
Some sort of photo identification would have been ideal, but there was nothing in the drawers of the dressing table. She couldn't find a handbag or a purse either, but she did find a safe. A safe that she had no idea how to open. That avenue blocked off, Mary started looking at the textbooks on the table to see if an owner's name had been written on a front page or even, as a friend did with their gaming rule books, on the closed book's page ends.
That was where it started and, frankly, she had no success, but she did become interested in the subject matter of the textbooks. They were evenly divided between summonings and protective circles. Looking at the sheet of paper she'd found in the middle of the table, it seemed to Mary that whatever the original owner of the body she was in had done, they'd cobbled it together from multiple sources. Which made the seamless piece of work an even more impressive feat. She was rereading a section on protective circles when there was a knock on the door and a man entered.
He was approaching middle age, wore robes over flowing trousers, and had two swords hanging at his side with a third slung across his back. He bowed to her and when he straightened he said, "Lady Maruko, your father commands you attend him in his study. He and Master Namagi wish to discuss your sorcery studies."
Mary took a deep breath, stood up, and winged it. She bowed to him but not as deeply as he had to her. "Of course, I will come at once." She rolled up the paper she had been studying and held it in her hand. "Please lead on."
The man gave her a very strange look.
Mary ventured as confidently as she could, "I have reasons for wishing to be escorted that may be relevant to my father's request. I am sorry if I am taking you away from other duties, but I would appreciate your assistance in this matter."
The man gave her another strange look, but said, "Of course, my lady. This way if you please." Then he held the door open for her to leave the room.
He led her along the corridor and then down a staircase to ground level, which was two floors below the room in which Mary had found herself. There had been no-one other than the two of them on the same level as Lady Maruko's rooms, but once they were down to the next level there were people in plainer robes and without face paint doing domestic work. Mary assumed that these were household staff and thus people she should know, but none of them would look at her directly and when she tried smiling and nodding at them, they shied away from her as if she'd lashed out at them. Mary stopped trying to be pleasant.
The man with the swords showed her into a room that reeked of executive office. Superior office furniture, highly polished wooden floors with a few high-quality rugs, and bookshelves that held books, but were half full of things that looked like trophies or official gifts. Two men were already in the room. Both were middle-aged. One was heavy set, wore a black robe with red detailing over flowing black trousers, and had greying hair with three fading red streaks in it. The other was taller, wore a dark purple robe with a star and leaf design on one shoulder, and had black hair that had gone grey at the temples and one offset silver streak running back from his temple. Both men were looking at her when she opened the door.
Mary bowed to the pair of them, bowing more deeply than she had done to the swords.
The man with the red streaks in his hair twitched an eyebrow but said mildly, "Lady Maruko, thank you for joining us so promptly. Master Namagi tells me that you may have been...unwise."
"Indeed," Mary tried to keep the tone of her unfamiliar voice light. "I am glad you are here, Master Namagi. Perhaps we should start with a discussion of protective circles?"
All three men gave her a very hard look, as if she now had their complete attention.
Master Namagi, the man with the silver streak in his hair, walked over to her and, standing closer than she would have liked, peered into her eyes. After a moment he asked fiercely, "Who are you and what have you done to Lady Maruko?"
"I think it's more a case of what Lady Maruko has done to me," Mary replied tartly. She unrolled the paper in her hand and held it up between her and Master Namagi. I woke up, maybe half an hour ago, on the floor next to a desk that had this on it. I do not know who Lady Maruko is and I don't know who any of you gentlemen are beyond what you've told me yourselves. I am sorry if I have been rude to any of you, but I do feel I'm handling things fairly well at the moment, all things considering."
Master Namagi took a step backwards so that he could take a better look at the paper. Mary wasn't quite sure what to make of the other two men's reactions.
The sorcery instructor looked up from his consideration of the paper Lady Maruko had left behind and asked, "What is the last thing you remember before you woke up here.... Oh, what is your name?"
"Mary Cleever, sir. The last I remember, the footpath collapsed under me, and I was falling in the dark. I think I hit my head, and then there was nothing.... I'm dead back where I came from, aren't I, sir?" That was a depressing consideration.
"It seems likely," agreed Master Namagi absentmindedly. "It would explain how you were available to move into Lady Maruko's body. I just don't understand how she was affected by the being that she summoned. This circle may be cobbled together, but it should have been effective."
"Ah, the paper was flat on the desktop when I found it," Mary told him. "I wonder if, perhaps, she leant over it while it was active? If she was over the top of the circle without damaging it, then she might have thought she was safe. Does the circle generate a sphere of protection or a circular wall?"
Master Namagi said slowly, "That question has never occurred to me because it has never occurred to me to perform a summoning on a piece of paper on a desktop. If she put herself inside the circle in anyway, then she would have been vulnerable to the creature she summoned. It, being what it is, would have ripped out her soul and made off with it." He thought for a moment, then went on, "So if her body became soulless but not dead at the moment that you died, it's possible that you were dragged in to fill the vacuum."
"So, my daughter may come back to her body?" That carefully phrased question was, of course, from his lordship.
"It is possible," conceded Master Namagi, " but there is the danger that she may not return alone. Or that she would be changed." He added, "In dangerous ways."
"How do we know that this person in my daughter's body is not dangerous?" demanded his lordship.
"There are tests that can be performed," replied Master Namagi.
"Excuse me," put in Mary, "but just how destructive and/or intrusive are these tests? Asking as the person to be tested, you understand."
"If you are not an unnatural creature, then the tests won't harm you or the body you are in at all," replied Master Namagi. "If you are unnatural, then they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable."
Mary clasped her hands in front of her midriff and contemplated them for a few moments, then said, "Perhaps we should just do these tests, get them out of the way, and know what we're dealing with. I mean, I don't believe that I'm an unnatural creature, but I'm not from here so I could be wrong. Once we do that, we will know the best way forward. After all, Lady Maruko is gone but her body is still walking around with me in it. It was seen walking down here from her rooms, so even if I am unnatural and have to be disposed of, there needs to be a believable and palatable explanation for public and official consumption, doesn't there?"
"That's very pragmatic of you," commented his lordship.
"How can I stop you if you decide to get rid of me?" pointed out Mary. "Lady Maruko may have studied sorcery, but I certainly haven't. If this body is capable of physically fighting off or evading this armed gentleman here, I would be very surprised. Besides, I suspect that her ladyship is not well liked in this household."
The armed man asked, "What do you mean?"
"I saw the way people reacted when I smiled at them on our way down here," she pointed out. "Also, I was alone in Lady Maruko's rooms for around half an hour after I regained consciousness on the floor. I suspect the body fell there when Lady Maruko was taken, but no-one came to investigate the sound of her falling. Either she took thorough precautions to ensure that she was not interrupted while doing what she was doing, or nobody cared enough to investigate."
"Maruko...is a difficult personality," admitted her father. One of the other men gave a short, coughing, snort of a laugh that Mary took to mean that his lordship had understated the matter. "She enjoys having power over others. Then using that power to expand her circle of control."
"Would that mean that she made unfilial use of family secrets to satisfy a tendency to act like a spoilt brat and insist on getting anything she wanted?" Mary looked at the three disconcerted faces. "Am I wrong? Characters like that do turn up in a number of popular stories where I come from."
"It would be an accurate summation," agreed Lady Maruko's father. "She has been accumulating power since her early teens. In our circles, those of the high nobility, this can be a matter of survival, but Maruko takes it to extremes and has not learnt to temper her desires with consideration of other goals."
Mary said slowly, "I have no idea what Lady Maruko's aims or goals are, and I believe I can't help but drop all the objects that she might be juggling at the moment. May I ask if she is your lordship's heir and whether her apparent aims conflict with yours?"
"She is the heir of my body, but not the heir to my dignities," replied his lordship. "Our aims have not been congruent."
"Could we explain the changes of behaviour by you pulling her back into line? Assuming that you have no intention of telling the world that your daughter got her soul stolen by something that she summoned and somebody else is in her body." Mary tried to tell how all three men reacted to that.
"Mmmmm," his lordship hummed a single note as he pondered. "You are correct in that I do not wish to tell the world that my daughter has failed so badly in an activity many of her peers dabble in - sorcery is a respectable course of study for young nobles, even if they lack the abilities to excel as practitioners. As she is the sole heir of my body, my bloodline continues only through her, so I have no wish for her body to die. Lady Maruko's sense of filial piety has never prevented her from resorting to blackmail and threats, and I would be happy for it to be known that I had found an effective counter threat." He smiled showing his teeth.
It occurred to Mary that his lordship might not be a nice person either. Instead of commenting, she asked, "What would behaving like an outmanoeuvred and suitably chastened daughter involve on my part?"
"Of more immediate importance is tonight," replied his lordship. "We are both going to a social gathering. Lady Maruko's betrothed will be there. The two of them are not intimate, it is an arranged match, but you must attend and the two of you will have to interact."
"And he doesn't like her either," guessed Mary.
"My daughter has spent years being deliberately not likeable," replied his lordship. "Now, Master Namagi will conduct his tests. Then, all being well, we shall eat lunch and I will brief you on what you need to know for tonight."
The next few hours were very busy, and Mary learned a great deal. First and foremost, of these was that she was not unnatural. Secondly, she seemed to retain Lady Maruko's physical skills and some of the skills that Mary had considered purely mental, like reading. She could write well in the visually unfamiliar alphabet and script, but, thirdly, that she retained nothing of Lady Maruko's personal memories. "Which means that I have no idea of what she's been up to," she elaborated to Lady Maruko's father, Lord Oshteru. "It's not a matter of being unable to juggle, it's much more that I can't even see the balls."
"Her safe may well contain the information that you lack," replied Lord Oshteru as the two of them sipped tea.
"Assuming that she wrote anything down," replied Mary grimly. "She might not have. How do we explain her being suddenly being unable to dress herself properly or deal with her makeup? I can do the things that Lady Maruko could do without thinking about it, but I don't even know where to start with choosing clothes."
Lord Oshteru gave her a look, there was no other way to describe it. "My daughter should know how to dress herself, but I do not know that she has ever done so. She also does not encourage her personal servants to become familiar with her, so I do not believe that any of them will notice anything different about you unless you try to be friendly with them. Hold yourself aloof but allow them to undress and readorn you, and all will be well."
Mary asked suspiciously, "I am expected to wash myself and clean my own teeth, aren't I?"
"My maternal grandmother did not," replied Lord Oshteru calmly, "but I believe that you may safely do so."
"I can be aloof from the servants," replied Mary, "but I should know their names. I suspect that Lady Maruko doesn't go around saying "Hey, you!" to the staff."
Lord Oshteru laughed. "True. She might not be so difficult to deal with if she did. Instead, she's...cruel."
"Oh. I hope they do notice a difference then," said Mary quietly. "When they comment, should the story be that you have made me pull my behaviour into line?"
"You would turn me into the hero of this story?" Lord Oshteru took another sip of tea.
"Why not?" Mary sighed. "I think that it needs one, so why not you?"
"It might be the Duke of Shan Sai Jan," he offered.
"That’s the betrothed you bought for your daughter? I need to meet him first. Besides, is it widely known that you bought his agreement to this betrothal?" Mary sipped her own tea.
Lord Oshteru tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the side of his teacup. "It depends on which circles you move in," he said quietly.
Hours later, after they had returned home from the gala that had been held by Prince Hinata, they were once more sharing a pot of tea. "So, what did you think?" Lord Oshteru took a deep sniff of the aromatic liquid in his cup.
"The Duke, my betrothed, is in love with someone else - Lady Yonoko I believe her name is." Lord Oshteru nodded. "Lady Maruko's 'dearest friends', Lady Satuko and Lady Jimako, are as nasty a pair of bitches as I've ever met and if Lady Maruko was planning to get behind them and stick her knife in, I'd be cheering her on. Prince Hinata is trying to persuade people to support something that seems to be political - something about Seodate from what he was talking to Lord Giroshi about."
"Then Giroshi talked to Lords Senthi and Tokaaru," mused Lord Oshteru. "That's an interesting alliance, or potential alliance."
"If I may ask a question," Mary interposed, and Lord Oshteru nodded encouragingly, "am I right in thinking that the nobility has two different backgrounds? There seems to be a distinct split between the lords with names ending in the ‘i’ sound and lords with names ending in the ‘u’ sound."
"Yes," replied Lord Oshteru. "Those of us with names ending in ‘u’ are descended from the clans of the Hengaru tribes. Those with names ending in ‘i’ are descended from the clans of the Amagari tribes. Now that you bring it up, those whose names end in ‘a’ are descended from the clans of the Nagahu raiders, and none of them were there tonight. Not one, and some are close kin to our host. That's very interesting - I may have to put out feelers and make some careful enquiries." He paused then clarified, “Hinata is the Prince’s formal given name, not his family name. The ending vowel does not signal an affiliation.”
"Where does the Duke of Shan Sai Jan fit in all of this?" Mary thought she knew what to do about the Duke, but it did depend a lot on Lord Oshteru, as her whole life did now.
"His family name is Ehtame. It's a granted name from the reign of the Dark Phoenix Emperor. His late majesty promoted a number of nameless men from the ranks of his army to positions of high nobility once he regained the throne. The Ehtames are one of the families that remain extant. The Oshteme are another - they are the Dukes of Ko Ri Ama."
"So, Lord Oshteru, how useful is it to your aims to have the Duke of Shan Sai Jan marry your daughter by coercion?" Mary waited for his answer.
"He'd be a useful ally," Lord Oshteru said slowly. "The vulnerabilities I am exploiting are not his, but legacies left by his father. Why do you ask?"
"Would he be a better ally if he was grateful for not having to marry Lady Maruko?" Mary watched as Lord Oshteru considered the matter.
"Possibly," replied Lord Oshteru thoughtfully. "What would happen to you? The reality of the matter is that you must marry someone."
Mary asked, "Is there someone who, as a son-in-law, would better suit your aims for this house? I would prefer someone who would be kind, and mutually monogamous, but it should be someone who can deal with Lady Maruko if she comes back."
Lord Oshteru gave her a slow, not entirely pleasant smile. "Lord Oshteme Ashinga. He's a second cousin to the current Duke of Ko Ri Ama, an accomplished sorcerer, and the two of us are in the same political faction."
"I think I might have spoken to him at the event tonight," Mary replied thoughtfully. "He was the one with a broken nose and black stripes in his black hair, wasn't he?"
"Yes, he would have been the only one there tonight with self-coloured hair," Lord Oshteru agreed. "He was wearing a short lapis-coloured over robe with vermillion detailing." He chuckled. "I believe he was making a statement." He caught Mary's puzzled look. "It was a rather gaudy outfit, and he is normally an elegant dresser."
"I didn't pick up on it being gaudy," admitted Mary, "but he did seem quite pleased with himself, I thought. Does he know Lady Maruko well enough to realise that I'm not her? I thought he didn't like her, then he was suddenly a whole different kind of abrupt, and that was all after he approached me."
"Hmmm." Lord Oshteru gave her a considering look. "We shall see. Did you dislike him?"
"He didn't give me long enough to form an opinion," replied Mary, "but he is quite good looking, to my eye. But then, I didn't realise that his over robe was gaudy."
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Date: 2022-07-24 05:44 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-07-24 06:05 am (UTC)So many interesting details in just under 4,500 words. I find myself wondering whether Lord Oshteme did in fact notice the change in personality and catch some significance and also Mary's life prior such that she's not panicking. (My character who was pulled into an alternate universe's version of themselves and back at the beginning of high school didn't panic at first purely because they were convinced initially that it was an odd dream.)
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Date: 2022-07-24 06:17 am (UTC)I am looking forward to more of this story.
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Date: 2022-07-24 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-07-24 06:22 am (UTC)No guarantees that there will be more at this time.
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Date: 2022-07-24 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-07-24 09:22 am (UTC)Also I love 'self-coloured hair' as a detail.
(And of course I love a clever, observant, sensible protagonist.)
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Date: 2022-07-24 09:50 am (UTC)The young lady who got sent off to the outpost where the laws of physics/magic get a bit odd.
The withemistress.
The now married pair of former soldiers.
The martial artist in not-China.
The folks in Railway Station.
and likely more I've forgotten.
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Date: 2022-07-24 11:55 am (UTC)Oh, if I could actually write a fat fantasy novel. Or a thin one. :)
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