See me if you have any questions.
Yours,
Sera”
I wanted to argue with her priorities to work on what I thought was important, but I couldn’t disagree with her. That was actually a really solid list.
I did, however, need considerably more detail to know which option to work with. So, I went to visit Sera to ask her directly.
She wasn’t at her room, so I ended up spending the rest of the day working on my own projects. I finally remembered to talk to her again a couple days later.
When she opened the door to her room, she folded her arms, glowering at me. “Corin. To what do I owe the magnanimity of your presence?”
I blinked. “I wanted to talk to you about the items you wanted?”
She wrinkled her nose. “What, you didn’t want to just, decide on something important like that without me?”
“Uh…no?” I scratched my chin. “You’re pretty obviously angry at me, but let’s assume I’m a complete jerk and don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ugh. Come in.” She gestured and I followed her inside. She shut the door loudly, but I wouldn’t quite call it a “slam”.
Back to folded arms. “I just received a letter from father asking what I think about your decision to offer a retainer position to Patrick.”
Oh.
Well, this is awkward.
“Aaaand your mad because I didn’t ask you about it first?”
She nodded firmly. “Patrick and I are friends, too, you know! Did you never consider that I might have some input? And a retainer — that’s a very serious decision, Corin. Not just for you, for the whole house!”
I winced. She was right about that, of course. And, I’d more or less promised to treat her as an equal, so making an executive decision about Patrick without even bringing the idea up to her…might have been a little bit hasty.
“I’m bad at these things, Sera. Sorry?” I put my hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“This is not a matter where a simple apology will be sufficient, Corin. Did you ever consider that maybe, just possibly, I had been thinking about making him my retainer?”
“Afterward,” I admitted, “But that probably would have made things more awkward.”
“What, is asking me something really so difficult?”
I lowered my eyes, shaking my head while I considered how to address the situation. “Uh, no. It’s not that at all. There were…special circumstances? If I told you more, it might be a problem with Patrick.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Are you saying you didn’t consult me because Patrick has some sort of problem with me? Because, you know, that would be an even bigger reason to talk to me before—”
“It’s not that, Sera.” I sighed. “I’m bad at this, so Patrick is just going to have to forgive me for being blunt. Has he asked you anything…uh, event related, recently?”
She frowned, looking briefly introspective. “No?”
I wiped my forehead. “Okay, spoiling the surprise here. He wants to ask you to the winter ball. And, since you’re a noble now, he was worried that would be inappropriate. Of course, asking you to make him your retainer right before asking you to a dance would look like he was just trying to get in your pants to move up the social ladder. So…”
“…you made him your retainer, so that he could have sufficient standing to ask me to a dance.”
I made a concluding swish of my hands. “Precisely.”
She put a hand over her eyes. “Are you daft, Corin? You let him take a life-long sacred oath so he could ask me to a dance?”
“Mmm. When you put it that way, it does sound pretty bad. But he was so sincere and adorable about wanting to ask you—”
Sera sighed, folding her hands in front of her. “Corin. For the future, please promise me you will not make any life-altering oaths in order to influence my love life.”
I considered that for a moment. “Wait, wouldn’t agreeing to that be a contradiction? I mean, wouldn’t I literally be making a—”
She took a step closer, looking me in the eyes. “Corin. I’m not kidding with you here. I am not amused by this, but I can tell you didn’t have any malicious intent. You thought he was being romantic. Fine. That is not a sufficient reason to make a decision regarding our house without my knowledge. Especially if it was to enable someone to court me.”
That wasn’t the only reason. I really did want Patrick as a retainer.
I took a deep breath. I wanted to argue, to snap back that the oath was between me and Patrick, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she had a point.
I’d put her in a bad position. If he’d gone this far out of his way just to get the standing necessary to ask her to a dance, saying “no” to him would be devastating. Which meant that I’d just put a bunch of pressure on Sera, without even considering how she felt about the situation.
I turned my head away. “Okay. You’re right. I made a decision that impacts you without even thinking about it. I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. From this point on, I’ll talk to you about any other house-related matters before I make any decisions.”
“House-related or anything pertaining directly to me, Corin.”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry. I just… didn’t want to ruin the surprise of him asking you. You know?”
“I understand, Corin. If he was just asking for advice from a friend, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to tell me about that. But for what it’s worth? You don’t know a thing about my love life. You’ve never asked. And, as it happens, I already have a date for that dance.”
“…Oh.”
She folded her arms. “And now, you get to share in my awkwardness. Assuming Patrick ever gets up the resolve to ask.”
And that was how I learned to never interfere in the relationships of my friends.
It was about twenty more minutes before we’d finally finished talking things out and gotten to a point where she was willing to talk to me about business again.
I pointed at the list. “Okay, first item. Mana storage device.”
She sat down on the floor, and I sat across from her, the paper between us. “Yeah. Seems rather obvious - running out of mana is a common problem, so I could use something that would help me refill my supply.”
“I figured that was your plan. Unfortunately, that particular route won’t work.”
She twisted her lips. “Why not? It sounds like a simple enchantment.”
“It is. It would, however, also probably kill you.”
“What?”
I chuckled. “A little hyperbole, maybe. So, when I enchant something, the item basically has my mana signature on it. Even if you store mana in it, that mana is getting exposed to my mana that’s in the device all the time. And mana belonging to other people is generally toxic.”
“Even for siblings? Wouldn’t we have similar mana?”
I…hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe? I don’t actually know how dangerous that would be… probably less than it would be for strangers, yeah. We probably do have similar types of mana. But I don’t know how far that goes. I’ve never heard of anyone sharing mana.”
And, while I wasn’t going to say it out loud — she’d just finally started to forgive me for my blunder with Patrick — I wasn’t actually certain we were siblings. Half-siblings seemed more likely, if even that. Knowing my father, this whole “legitimizing” her could have been a political game of some kind.