Mech Pilot who has eschewed the blade, for that is the weapon of fools, fops and the founders of tyranny. Hark! The rotary wand armature is the fulcrum of this era’s battles.
Turmoil.
Acceptance to the court was a dream, was the work of a life, was everything. Being here, achieving it, has blossomed into new experiences, a whole new world she knew nothing of; and every second of it hurts like poison in her veins.
She asked, privately, for the death sentence of her ambitions: for permission to be absorbed by one of the noble houses, her aims blunted and turned aside, put in a trophy case with all the other small dreams of a noble lineage, subordinated to the juggernaut ones of the status quo. But it is not enough, never enough, for the mills of institution grind the daring ever finer. There is a set date of the court calendar, when she must stand before the world and ask the same formally. Officially. Grovel for leave to be annihilated.
When she dresses for it, running the sensitive pads of her hands over the carefully mended jacket in which she'd chased the Orb, she knows she cannot.
When she waits in turn to stand before the throne, she knows she will not.
When she stands beneath the cold, compelling eyes of the Princess she swore to serve, she still doesn't know what to do instead.
She has a formal speech to recite, words burned into tradition, begging permission. Instead:
"I came here to prove that I'm as good a knight as any Borzoi," she says, voice brave in a way she still isn't, in her heart. "I did so well enough for your Highness to accept my service, but the court in which I find myself is cold and painful and scheming, and cares for nothing but the whims of the powerful and the maintenance of their position. Your Highness, I ask your leave now to prove I am better: I would be released, and leave as Knight no more."
Silence.
Starkly wounded eyes in a mask of Royal impassive ice.
Uproar from the onlookers; ire from assorted nobles.
The Princess sits and sits and stares down at her, and she looks up in turn, heart squeezed painfully within her.
"Return our emblem," the Princess say simply, and with shaking hands she unbuckles the leather band with its shining medallion from her throat, and holds it out. There are hands employed to take things on behalf of the Crown, but the Princess rises, slow and pale, reaches out herself to take it from the Corgi's hands. "Be released from service, Goodgirl Corgi."
And then, voice suddenly plummeted from the ringing oration that addresses the court to just that of a person, facing another, and speaking for themself alone, she says: "Go free," as if it breaks something within her to do it.
"Your Highness," the Corgi says, and bows as deep as she ever did, then turns and leaves, head high.
Eventually, the crowd must be threatened with indiscriminate arrest to even slightly calm them.
Six weeks later, a bespectacled Schnauzer approaches the Corgi in a tavern. She looks worn, dark circles beneath her eyes; penniless and notorious, even the seemingly simple business of leaving town has become intractably sticky.
As he places his tankard on the bar next to her, she wearily says, "Tomas de Poodle has eyes and ears on me, Goodboy. Whatever you think to gain, I think you should not risk being seen here."
"Such a coincidence! They constantly watch me, too." He slides onto a stool. "Tell me, do you know who I am?"
"You're widely supposed to be the pen behind those anti-monarchical tracts signed Johann." She sips her ale. "Even if I agree with many of the things you say about the court, if I intended the violent destruction of her Highness, I've stood as close to her as to you now; clearly she still lives."
"We all have parts to play in the revolution," he says. "I would show you something; I will be at the clock, beneath the cathedral's tower, this midnight."
"Good luck to you," she says flatly; and yet night sees her in a dark cloak and doing her best to evade any furtive followers.
Johann leads her by further roundabout ways to the house of a co-conspirator, where steamworks diagrams are spread upon a table by lanternlight.
"What is this?"
"This is the design for a device of enormous revolutionary potential." Johann smiles a dreaming smile; at the diagrams, not her. "The people's folkways were suppressed by the advent of the Steam Armour; what is magic against cold metal? A wand takes long seconds to recover from the arcane shock of casting an offensive spell; and the metal bulk of the Armour saps the spell of most of its force. It would take the combined mass of twenty, thirty witches to bring down a modern Knight. Twenty or thirty — or one, with twenty to thirty wands in a rotating apparatus, able to cast as swiftly as thought, and safely ensconced within an Armour of their own."
The Corgi's fingers trace the diagrams. "An Armour for two," she murmurs. "A pilot and a witch." And then she hardens, and says with her new coldness, "and if you could manufacture an army of them, and an army of pilots and witches, you'd have enough to take the Knights. It strikes me, Goodboy Johann, that if you have any fewer, then your target can't be the Knights themselves. It strikes me that this rotating apparatus, capable of destroying a Steam Armour, could equally well massacre a vast crowd, unarmoured. I know of your pamphlets; I know you consider the murder of innocents an undermining tactic. I will not pilot your slaughter."
Johann smiles, still; and still not for her. "Principle is a beautiful thing," he says. "And come the day, a luxury nobody will have. Will you not, Comrade? I think we'll see."
