((For quite some time I considered not posting this interlude/side story at all, I'd just show the effects of Alric's bra development happening to him. Why? Because it's not particularly central to the story. I have uhm'd and aah'd about these chapters because it would also mean tagging on RR with sexual content because there is a woman wearing a bra and RR is heavy for those types of things. Anyway, I'm just making it a Patreon exclusive. Two roll out today between 123 and 124. The other takes place after 124.5 and the last at 126.5. Enjoy, they don't replace the normal chapter drops and are all Seren's POV.))
The package arrived in brown wrapping.
Seren had learned, over the course of her time managing Alric’s affairs, that trouble rarely announced itself honestly. It did not kick doors open, shout, or arrive with a drawn knife. Those things were simple. Those things could be handled. Trouble, real trouble, came folded, sealed, politely addressed, and placed on a desk by someone who had no idea they had just delivered a weapon.
This package was exactly that sort of problem.
It sat on the edge of her desk with the quiet confidence of an object that knew more than she did.
The wrapping was plain. Plain with intent. The sort of plain chosen by someone who wished to communicate discretion without admitting that discretion was required. The twine was neat. The seal was Terven’s. No ribbon. No unnecessary marking beyond her name written in a hand too controlled to belong to anyone innocent.
Seren stared at it.
A delivery boy, who had brought it in, lingered just long enough to make the situation worse.
“It came from the tailor,” he said.
The small boy grinned with expectation. Seren sighed as she handed over a small copper coin. That got a grin missing two teeth. Despite herself she had smiled.
Seren remained still for a moment. The package continued to sit there.
There were packages that contained cloth. There were packages that contained ledgers, contracts, samples, food, tools, and occasionally something Alric had purchased because he believed that if an object solved one problem, buying three of it solved the problem more permanently.
This package had the spiritual weight of Alric being pleased with himself.
She knew it. She could feel it. There was no evidence of this, which only made her more certain.
Seren reached for the note first.
It was folded neatly, sealed with Terven’s mark, and addressed to Mistress Seren in a hand so measured it appeared to have been written by a man afraid of being quoted later.
She broke the seal.----------
Mistress Seren,
The first of the five support garments commissioned by Master Alric has been completed according to the measurements we have from your earlier dress order. As this is the initial garment, I request that you attend my shop at your earliest convenience for final fitting and adjustment.
Given the delicate nature of the article, please bring a trusted escort.
Naturally, all matters will be handled with the utmost discretion.
Terven
‐---------
Seren read it three times, because surely the words would arrange themselves into something less catastrophic if given another opportunity.
The first of the five support garments.
Not one. One might have been a mistake. One might have been a misunderstanding, a single lapse in judgement, an unfortunate act of masculine helpfulness committed by a man whose sense of boundaries had been damaged by exposure to boilers, yeast, and merchant negotiations.
Five was not a mistake. Five was procurement. Five meant money had changed hands, cloth had been selected, and somewhere in the city a man had stood in Terven’s shop and calmly discussed garments in her name.
Seren’s eyes returned to one phrase.
Commissioned by Master Alric.
Of course it was Alric. She closed her eyes.
The room did not become less real. She opened them again. The note remained.
“Support garments,” she said aloud, because sometimes saying a terrible thing aloud revealed that it had been imaginary.
Her gaze drifted to the package.
It looked smaller now. More deliberate. Less like a parcel and more like evidence.
Her dress measurements? Terven had those. That was reasonable. Terven was a tailor. Tailors had measurements. It was their profession, not a moral failing.
But support garments required different measurements.
Surely. Probably.
She did not know exactly which measurements, which immediately made the whole matter suspicious. If she did not know, then Alric certainly did not know. Unless Terven had explained. Unless there had been diagrams.
Seren stood. Then sat down again.
She read the note again, more slowly, as though it were a hostile contract.
Trusted escort.
That line was somehow the final insult. Terven had written it with professional concern, no doubt. He had likely dipped his pen, considered the phrasing, and decided that delicate nature was the correct term because tailors, like priests, had learned to make words heavier than necessary.
A trusted escort. As though she were going to walk into this alone. As though any of this was acceptable.
Seren placed the note on the desk, smoothed it flat with two fingers, and considered burning it.
Unfortunately, burning the note would not burn the package. Burning the package would raise questions. Burning the tailor’s shop was likely excessive, though she did not fully dismiss the option.
Then it came to her.
Socks.
Her expression went very still.
Alric and his cursed socks.
For weeks, she had made the occasional comment. Only occasional. Barely worth mentioning. Entirely justified comments about the way he treated socks as though they were the foundation stones of civilisation. The man had opinions about thickness. Reinforcement. Toe seams. Wicking, whatever that was. He had lectured Henry once on the importance of dry feet with the grave expression of a physician delivering news to a doomed family.
Seren had mocked him. Reasonably, mildly, repeatedly. In fairness too many times, she would admit.
She had once said that if he were ever made a lord, his banner would be a sock. She only said that to Brannick.
Alric had not answered with words. He had not sulked like he sometimes did when he felt misunderstood. He had not defended himself. He had gone away, considered the matter in whatever strange, overbuilt corner of his mind produced solutions to problems no one had asked him to solve, and then commissioned retaliation.
Professional retaliation. Tailored retaliation.
Seren stared at the package.
“You petty man,” she whispered.
Seren exhaled slowly through her nose, then untied the twine with the careful precision of a woman disarming a trap. The brown wrapping loosened.
She folded it back. Inside was cloth.
Not much cloth, which did not improve matters.
Seren braced herself.
She expected lace. Or ribbons. Or something scandalously thin, decorative, foolish, or insulting. Something that would allow outrage to take its proper shape. Something she could hold up between two fingers, condemn as indecent.
Instead, she found a garment that appeared to have been designed by a person with an infuriating understanding of both fabric and female anatomy.
It was soft where it would touch skin, firm where firmness had a purpose, and shaped with the calm confidence of engineering. The lower band was reinforced without being stiff. The cups were modest and carefully lined. The straps were adjustable, albeit with a small flat knot. The whole felt like deep thought, not only the making of the thing, but the future inconvenience of wearing it on different days.
Seren lifted it out of the wrapping. It unfolded in her hands. She stared at it.
It was not scandalous.
That was the scandal.
Had it been vulgar, she would have known what to do. Had it been absurd, she could have laughed and then shouted. Had it been ugly, she could have dismissed it. Had it been careless, she could have been offended cleanly and with satisfaction.
But no.
It was practical. Worse, it was well made. Worse still, it was considerate.
The stitching was excellent. Of course it was. Terven did not make poor work. Alric, when spending money on something he believed necessary, had all the brilliance with none of the restraint.
Together, they had produced this. A respectable catastrophe.
Seren sat down again, still holding it.
A man should not purchase such a thing for a woman. That was true. Especially not without speaking to her. Also true. Especially not five. Very true.
Especially not as revenge for sock-related comments.
That should have been enough to carry the entire argument by itself.
Seren glared at it.
“You are not helping.”
The garment, like all of Alric’s best arguments, remained annoyingly practical.
She could almost hear him.
Not smug. That would have been easier. Alric did smug badly, and usually by accident. No, he would be calm. Reasonable. He would explain load distribution. He would say something about straps. He would probably compare it to footwear. He would say that no one mocked good socks after walking ten miles in foot wraps.
She pressed a hand over her eyes.
“If he says support infrastructure, I will kill him.”
The room offered no objection. There was still the matter of trying it on.
Seren lowered her hand.
No. Absolutely not. I will not.
There were limits to how much of Alric’s nonsense a person could dignify with participation. She had not asked for this. She had not consented to become a battlefield in his campaign for practical clothing. She would wrap it back up, send it to Terven, and inform him that Master Alric could support himself directly into the river.
She stood with that intention. Then paused.
If she returned it without trying it, Terven would ask whether the fit was wrong. If Terven asked whether the fit was wrong, she would have to say she did not know. If she said she did not know, then the problem would remain open.
Open problems became meetings. Meetings became explanations. Explanations became Alric.
Seren looked at the door. Then glanced at the garment.
“This is for evidence,” she said.
She crossed to the door, checked the latch, then checked it again because paranoia was, in some circumstances, simply good sense. She listened for footsteps. None came. The household continued beyond the walls in ordinary motion, entirely unaware that a new and dangerous form of warfare had entered its midst.
Seren changed with the grim focus of a soldier preparing for battle.
The removal of her usual wraps immediately soured her mood. They had always been a nuisance, but a familiar nuisance. They were cloth. They did a job. Not well, perhaps, but consistently enough that one did not think about it unless forced to.
Being forced to think about it was already Alric’s fault.
The first attempt to put on the new garment was not dignified.
There were straps where she expected none. She muttered once, then twice, then informed the absent Alric that if this was his idea of progress, progress could learn to wait outside.
The adjustable pieces were clever. She hated that most of all.
A tug here. A shift there. The band settled. The straps pulled differently. She adjusted again, ready for pinching, binding, awkward pressure, anything that would allow her to remove it with righteous fury.
It settled.
Seren froze.
Nothing dug in. That was suspicious.
She straightened slowly. Her shoulders changed first.
There was no burst of light, no divine motes, no choir of priests shouting preposterous at the ceiling. Her shoulders simply stopped holding a burden they had apparently been holding for so long that she had mistaken the effort for posture.
Her back followed.
She took a breath. Then another. The second breath was easier.
Seren stared at the wall.
“No.”
She stared at the ceiling hoping for strength or discomfort.
She lifted her arms. Carefully at first, then more fully. Nothing slipped or pinched. She turned her shoulders. The weight moved with her, contained and supported instead of reminding her, every moment, that cloth wrapped under tension was a deeply imperfect solution invented by people who had given up too early.
She lowered her arms. Her usual wraps lay on the chair.
For the first time in years, they looked less like clothing and more like punishment.
Seren did not like the direction of her own thoughts.
This is inappropriate.
That remained true. She held to it firmly.
It was wildly inappropriate. Alric had crossed into territory that should have required permission, warning, perhaps three layers of social negotiation and a witness. He had no business arranging any of this. He had no right to be involved. It was personal. It was intimate. It was humiliating. It was so much better.
She adjusted the strap a fraction.
The pressure eased further.
Seren closed her eyes.
This was indecently thoughtful.
He had committed thoughtfulness in a way that made strangling him socially complicated.
Seren opened her eyes.
She stepped toward the small polished metal sheet.
The dress was still off, and she refused to look at herself for longer than necessary. This was not a matter of admiration. It was inspection. A practical inspection. Evidence gathering. Battlefield assessment.
Even so, the change was obvious.
Her posture looked different. The line of her shoulders had softened. The slight forward guarding she had not noticed before had lessened. When she put the dress back on, the cloth sat more cleanly. The whole thing disappeared beneath the fabric in a way that felt like another betrayal.
No one would know. That meant she could wear it. That meant she might want to wear it. That meant Alric had won a round without being present.
“Oh no,” she said quietly.
It was comfortable.
The words had the shape of defeat. She walked three paces. Comfortable. She sat. Still comfortable. She stood again, faster this time, hoping for some failure. Comfortable and stable. She bent slightly to pick up the discarded wrapping. The garment stayed where it was.
Seren straightened, stared at the ceiling, and silently revised several opinions she had previously held about the moral value of cloth.
Every breath was another argument in Alric’s favour, and she found the most infuriating of all.
There was a knock at the door.
Seren turned so sharply that the garment continued doing its job, which only worsened the moment.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, why is this locked?” came the voice of Brannick.
She glanced around the room as panic flared. First her gaze found the note. Then the package. Then the mirror, where her own posture continued being improved against her will.
She inhaled.
Realizing she had done nothing wrong, she unlocked the door and stepped back.
A moment later, Brannick entered with the alert expression of a man prepared for violence, insult, injury, or some other problem that could be addressed with his body in front of someone else’s.
His gaze moved over the room. Then over Seren. Then to the package. Then to the note. Then back to Seren.
“What happened?” he asked.
That was Brannick’s gift. He did not begin with assumptions. He began with the possibility that someone needed help.
“Alric has… retaliated,” Seren said sitting down on her chair.
Brannick’s expression sharpened.
“With what?”
Seren picked up the note and handed it to him.
He took it carefully. Read it. His brow furrowed. Then he read it again. It was oddly comforting that he also required a second attempt. He had to use his finger to follow the words.
His eyes stopped on the relevant phrase.
“Support garments?” he said. “From Terven?”
Seren nodded while looking disappointed.
He looked at the empty package, then at Seren, then back at the note.
There was a pause. A very dangerous pause.
“So,” Brannick said slowly, choosing each word with the caution of a man stepping through tall grass after being told there might be snakes, “he bought you armour?”
Seren looked at him.
Brannick immediately realised he had made a mistake. Not the nature of the mistake, perhaps, but certainly its size.
“Not armour?” he asked slowly.
Seren continued looking at him.
“Clothing armour?”
The room became colder.
“I will stop speaking,” he said.
“That would be wise.”
Brannick folded the note and set it back on the desk with the care of a man placing down something that might detonate.
He glanced toward the package again, then seemed to remember that looking too closely might be its own crime and fixed his attention firmly on the wall beside Seren instead.
“Is it bad?” he asked.
This was, somehow, the wrong question and the correct one at the same time.
Seren crossed her arms, then uncrossed them because the movement reminded her that crossing them no longer pulled uncomfortably in the same way.
Her mood declined further.
“It is not bad. That’s the problem.”
Brannick nodded slowly.
“Ah.”
“Do not ah me.”
He wisely said nothing.
Seren pouted and slumped her face into her hand, her elbow on her knee. Brannick bit his lip very hard because he’d never seen Seren pout before.
“It is about socks,” she said finally. “I mocked him.”
Brannick looked less prepared than before.
“You two are just like that.”
“Lightly.”
Brannick did not answer quickly enough.
Seren narrowed her eyes.
“Lightly.”
“Of course.”
“He has now answered by... I don’t even have the words. I feel defeated.”
“So Alric got one up on you? He is a strangely clever bugger, not sure who else could.” Brannick said unwisely.
Seren smiled. It was not a kind smile.
Brannick looked at the ceiling for a moment, perhaps asking one of the gods for intervention. None came. The gods, in Brannick’s experience, were often very interested in beer and very absent during conversations that might have benefited from divine mercy.
“He should not have done it?” Brannick asked carefully.
“No.”
“But it helps?”
Seren hated him a little for that.
“It is so comfortable,” she said, as though confessing to a crime.
Brannick absorbed this. Then, mercifully, did not explain it back to her. Instead, he looked at the note again.
“Terven wants you to go for adjustment?”
“Yes.”
“That makes sense, but uh… could I see this thing? Whatever it is.”
She looked at him before she nodded. She stood up and removed her dress.
Brannick whistled appreciatively.
“That… looks a lot better. Isn’t it?” he asked innocently. “I’m not sure I see the problem?”
She did not think he would, but he was trying. Brannick had many qualities. He would stand between her and a threat without hesitation. He could read a room well enough when knives, men, or power were involved. He could carry silence with dignity. He could not, however, fully understand why a comfortable garment was a declaration of war.
That was fine. She understood enough for both of them.
“You are coming with me,” she said.
“To Terven’s?”
Brannick’s expression shifted but he nodded.
It was subtle, but she saw it. The look of a man who had just been informed that bravery now required standing in a tailor’s shop while women talked.
“Should I bring a sword?”
Seren stared at him.
He looked away and bit his cheek this time.
Seren gathered the wrapping, the note, and what remained of her dignity before putting the dress back on.
The bra remained under her dress, secure, soft-lined, and utterly traitorous.
She adjusted her sleeves. Checked the mirror again despite herself. Her whole torso looked better. That made everything worse.
Brannick, perhaps unwisely, noticed.
“Does it hurt less?”
Seren did not turn from the mirror.
“Brannick.”
“Forget I asked.”
The walk to Terven’s shop felt like the beginnings of a military campaign.
Seren moved through the household with the grim calm of a woman on official business.
Outside, the air was cool enough to make the walk tolerable and bright enough to ensure the city could witness her humiliation if it somehow became visible to the naked eye.
It did not. That was another problem. No one could tell.
She walked like a woman wearing ordinary clothes and carrying ordinary irritation. No one knew that beneath her dress, Alric’s revenge had improved her posture.
The thought was unbearable.
Brannick walked beside her in silence for the journey. It was a heroic effort.
Seren used the walk to prepare.
First, she would speak to Terven. Calmly. Professionally. She would establish the nature of the commission, the exact number of garments, and the level of Alric’s involvement. Then she would make clear that all further communication regarding such articles would come to her directly.
After that, she would decide how much of Alric’s life needed to become difficult.
There were options.
His socks could go missing. No too obvious.
His sock supply could be replaced with subtly inferior pairs.
No. Too cruel. Also, he will notice immediately, and then there would be another lecture.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of the tailor. Terven’s sign hung above the door, respectable and ordinary, as though nothing inside had been used to commit social violence.
Brannick slowed half a pace. Seren did not. He matched her again quickly.
At the door, she stopped.
Then she squared her shoulders, immediately noticed how much easier that was now, and nearly turned around out of pure spite.
Instead, she opened the door and stepped inside to negotiate with the enemy.