Chapter 6: Even the King Is My Friend

【Sakura — PoV】

I am being very good.

I want everyone to know that. I am being very, very good. I am sitting up straight. I have my hands folded on the desk. I have my hair tied back with the silver clip Alfred-kun gave me on my eighth birthday, the one I have worn every day for ten years because a promise is a promise, even if the boy you made the promise with does not know he made one. I am paying attention. I am taking notes. I am smiling at my instructors. I am being the model Tower student.

I am also writing letters.

The letters do not count, because I am writing them under the desk, and what an instructor cannot see, an instructor does not need to worry about. That is not a Tower rule. That is a Sakura rule. Sakura rules are also very important.

The Tower is not so bad.

Everyone tried to scare me about it before I came in. You cannot leave, Sakura-chan. You will be locked away, Sakura-chan. The instructors are very strict, Sakura-chan. Honestly, what a lot of fuss. The food is excellent. My room has a window. My window faces south. South is where Alfred-kun’s house is. South is also, now, where the road to the capital begins, because Alfred-kun is on that road right at this very moment, and I know this because I am extremely good at calendars.

The first instructor who tried to take my silver clip got a very long, very calm explanation of why she was not going to do that. She did not take the clip. She also did not look me in the eye for the rest of the day. I think she is shy.

“Haruno-san. Are you listening.”

“Yes, Sensei.”

“What did I just say?”

“You said the second principle of binding magic is intent.”

“…correct.”

“Sensei is a very good teacher.”

“…thank you, Haruno-san.”

Sensei went back to the board. I went back to my letter.

You learn things in a tower full of mages. Most of them are useful. Some are very useful. For example, there is a small spell called Whisper-on-the-Wind, taught to second-year students to send short messages between rooms. They do not teach it to first-years. They consider it advanced. I learned it on Tuesday afternoon, between lunch and my afternoon evaluation, by sitting next to a second-year girl named Mira at lunch and asking her about her day for thirty-seven minutes. Mira is lonely. Mira’s roommate is mean to her. Mira likes the apple cakes from the south kitchen. Mira will teach me anything I want to know, as long as I sit next to her at lunch and listen to her talk about the boy in her year who has not noticed she exists.

I am very interested in the boy. I am very interested in Mira. I am very interested in Mira’s spells.

This is called being a good friend.

The Whisper-on-the-Wind spell can carry a single sentence about half a mile, in a straight line, on a calm day. Half a mile is not very far. The Tower is, however, very tall. The capital is south of here. In the morning, the wind comes from the north. If you go up to the top of the Tower at dawn, with your message ready, and you cast the spell down the south wind, the message can travel — well. Much further than half a mile.

Mira does not know I know that.

Mira will probably never know.

“Haruno-san. Pay attention, please.”

“Yes, Sensei. Sorry, Sensei.”

I am paying attention. I am simply paying attention to several things at once. This is a skill. Alfred-kun’s mother once told me that a clever woman can hold three thoughts in her head and still smile. I love Alfred-kun’s mother. Alfred-kun’s mother understands me. Alfred-kun’s mother once let me help her sort the linen cupboard for an entire afternoon while Alfred-kun hid in the orchard, and at the end she patted my cheek and said, Sakura-chan, you will be such a help to him one day. I have thought about that sentence approximately one thousand times.

The orchard, in case anyone is wondering, has very few hiding places. I had to pretend not to find him for almost an hour. He was so proud of himself when I gave up. I love it when he is proud of himself. He is so cute when he thinks he has won.

The bell rang.

Class was over. I gathered my notes neatly. I bowed to Sensei. I walked out of the classroom at a perfectly normal pace, smiled at two girls in the hallway who I had decided this morning were going to be my friends, and went back to my room.

My room is on the south side of the Tower. I requested the south side. The room I was originally assigned was on the east side. I went to the housekeeping office on my second day with a small basket of dried plums I had made myself from the plums in the Tower garden, and I sat down across from the housekeeper and explained that I have a sensitivity to morning light. The housekeeper said there were no south rooms available. I asked her, very kindly, about her grandchildren. She has four. The youngest one is sick. I listened for a long time. At the end, she patted my hand and said she would see what she could do.

I had a south-facing room by dinner.

People are wonderful when you are kind to them.

I sat down at my little desk. I unfolded the letter I had been writing in class. I read it over. The handwriting was a little uneven from writing under the desk, so I copied it out fresh on a clean sheet of good paper.

【Your Majesty,

It is with the greatest gratitude that I thank you for your wisdom in summoning Alfred Takafumi the Second to the Royal Academy of Magic. He is a young man of extraordinary potential. His grandfather served the crown faithfully, and his father serves it now. It would be a great shame for the kingdom to lose such a bloodline to the quiet life of a provincial guild. I am certain that under the guidance of the Academy’s instructors, he will bring great honor to your reign, and I am equally certain that the kingdom will benefit from his service for many years to come.

With deepest respect and continued loyalty,

Sakura Haruno

(Daughter of Lady Haruno of the Eastern Reach, currently in residence at the Tower)】

I read it once. Twice. Three times. I changed “great shame” to “regrettable loss” because shame is a strong word and the king does not like feeling pressured. I changed “many years” to “many generations” because the king is a romantic at heart, and the word “generations” makes him think of his own legacy, which he likes to think about. I added a brief postscript about the weather.

This was the third letter I had written to His Majesty.

The first one had gone out two days ago, with the morning post, on the back of a request for additional study materials. The second one had gone with the regular Tower courier on its weekly run to the capital. This one would go with Mira’s older brother, who visits her once a fortnight. Mira’s older brother works in the palace kitchens. Mira’s older brother thinks I am a very nice friend of Mira’s. Mira’s older brother will hand-deliver this letter to the steward of the royal correspondence office, where I have been told by a very kind young clerk named Tomas — who I met exactly once at a guild festival when I was fourteen and who has remembered me very fondly ever since — that letters from Tower students are read with priority.

Three letters in four days is a lot.

I am aware of this.

I have, however, sent only one letter under my own name. The other two were signed with names I had borrowed from people who would not mind. One was an old retainer of Alfred-kun’s family who was fond of me and would happily lend me his name for anything. The other was a noblewoman of my mother’s circle who, when I sat with her at tea last spring and explained my hopes for Alfred-kun’s future with great sincerity and several tears that were entirely genuine, had pressed both my hands and said, Sakura-chan, anything you need.

People are wonderful when you tell them about your hopes.

The summons to the Academy had come within forty-eight hours of my first letter.

I had cried when I heard. Real crying. The clerk who delivered the news to the Tower was very alarmed. I told her they were tears of relief because Alfred-kun had been so worried about his future, and now he had a future, and oh, the relief, oh, the joy. She brought me a handkerchief. She told the housekeeper I was a very sensitive young woman. The housekeeper brought me a second cup of tea at dinner that night.

People.

Wonderful.

I sealed the letter. I set it aside. I walked to my window.

The window faces south. The sky was very blue today. Somewhere down that road, somewhere past the long gold of the capital fields, Alfred-kun was arriving at the Academy. Alfred-kun was, at this very moment, stepping out of a royal carriage onto the white stones of the Academy courtyard, and he was probably a little annoyed about it. His hair was probably a little messy from the ride, and he was probably looking up at the towers with that small frown he gets when he is pretending not to be impressed by something.

I love that frown.

I have a sketch of that frown. I drew it from memory. It is in the front of my Tower notebook, behind the pressed flower I picked from his mother’s garden three years ago.

I cannot leave the Tower.

This is the rule. This is the firm, clear, absolutely unbendable rule, and I am respecting it completely, because rules are rules and Sakura is a good girl. I cannot walk out the front gate. I cannot leave through any door. I cannot be carried out, carted out, or summoned out. The seal on the Tower’s threshold is one of the strongest in the kingdom. My grandfather helped lay the stones. My grandfather was very thorough.

I cannot leave the Tower.

But.

There are many things that are not “leaving the Tower.”

There are, for example, the tall, long windows on the upper floors that look out over the city, the fields, and the south road. There are the practice yards in the inner courtyards, where Tower students may train in the open air under an instructor’s supervision. There are the visitors’ parlors, where family members of Tower students may visit, with the Headmistress’s approval, on the second weekend of every month. There is the post. There is Mira. There is the kind young clerk Tomas in the royal correspondence office. There are the housekeeper’s grandchildren. There is Alfred-kun’s mother, who writes me a letter every Friday and has already, in the warm, casual way of a future mother-in-law, mentioned that she has spoken to the Headmistress about an educational visit she is planning for the autumn.

There are many, many things that are not “leaving the Tower.”

I am a very patient girl. I have been patient for ten years, ever since I was seven and Alfred-kun gave me a pinwheel at the summer festival, when I decided, very calmly, that I was going to marry him. I can be patient for a few more weeks. A few more months. A few more years, if it comes to that.

Patience is not the absence of action. Patience is action, performed slowly, with great care, and with many small letters sent under many small names.

I touched the silver clip in my hair.

I smiled at the south road.

Then I sat at my desk, opened my notebook to a fresh page, and began a new letter. The next one would go to a noblewoman in the capital whose daughter attended the Academy. I had heard, through a friend of a friend, that the daughter was kind, pretty, and looking for a study partner.

It would be such a shame if she happened to choose Alfred-kun.

It would be even more of a shame if I did not warn her, with great gentleness and tact, about how very devoted his existing childhood friend was.

I dipped my pen.

I began.

Dear Lady Velmont…