21. Roos, Redux

Transmigrated Teri is an ongoing isekai/portal fantasy series about Teri Graves, an embittered middle-age GenX office lady who gets into a massive car accident and wakes up in the world of the fantasy series she loves to hate, The Allisar Fireborn Chronicles. She knows the characters, she knows the plot, and she knows that its all a massive coma dream…except for how nothing is as it should be. Worse? She woke up in the body of the doomed evil stepmother! She escaped a pandemic for this?

Table of Contents

---

Previously: Teri decided to do things differently this time…

Teri had Lady Sariat help her sit up properly in the bed, and allowed Lady Elisandar to pick out “more appropriate attire” since technically Roos was an outsider, neither family nor assigned staff. As Ota’s manservant, his visit was considered worthy of at least an overrobe, apparently.

It bunched up behind her back uncomfortably, but she absolutely was not going to move around any more than she had to. The adrenaline from waking up was already dropping, and she remembered the intense pain from her last time loop.

“Should I prepare some medicated tea?” Lady Sariat asked, obviously picking up on Teri’s pained grunts.

“I need to have my wits about me for this, so no.” Teri inspected the heavily embroidered sleeves and lace cuffs of the robe. It was gorgeous and obviously handmade, and way out of her price range. “But have it on hand.”

Lady Sariat nodded and went out of the room for a moment, returning with the paper packet of whatever passed for pain medicine in Luttiron Castle.

“May I ask what Milady wishes to discuss with Roos?” Lady Elisandar asked, trying and failing to be casual about it.

“The Spring Gala. I don’t trust Lord Ota not to cause a political disaster.”

“Ah. Yes.” Lady Elisandar hid a grimace. It wasn’t as if Teri had said anything untrue.

Lady Sariat put a small tray with the prepared tea on the bed next to Teri. She smiled winsomely at Teri’s raised eyebrow.

“If you sip it over the course of the meeting, it will take effect slowly.”

“And keep the pain down as it builds up over time, instead of waiting for the pain to become acute. Smart idea. Thank you.”

Lady Sariat stared at her in surprise for a moment, which made Teri remember that Lady Greyrage was not in the habit of thanking the servants for doing their jobs.

“Ah, you’re welcome, Milady,” Lady Sariat said uncertainly before quickly retreating to clean up the tea cart while they waited.

Roos arrived at a perfectly timed appearance that could not be faulted either way. Not too fast, which would imply that he was at her beck and call, and not after any meaningful delay, which would have suggested a power play. Approximately twenty minutes after Lady Sariat had gone to find him, he knocked twice and waited.

“Come in,” Teri called out as Lady Sariat opened the door. Lady Elisandar looked at her like she was insane. Probably because high ranking ladies did not shout “come in!” at the door like a tavern keeper, Teri thought with chagrin. She really was out of her pay grade in more ways than one.

Roos entered with his characteristic economy of movement, efficient and pragmatic. He was carrying his small ledger, which told her he’d assumed this was going to be about something practical so came prepared. His eyes went to her first, then to Theo, then did a brief, practiced sweep of the room that took in Lady Elisandar in her chair, and paused briefly on Lady Sariat near the window before settling back on Teri.

“Milady,” he said. “You’re looking better.”

“I’m looking conscious,” she said. “That’s not quite the same thing.”

He nodded and stepped fully into the center of the room, Lady Sariat closing the door behind him.

“Thank you for coming. I have a few things I’d like to discuss.” She folded her hands in her lap and channeled the vibe of someone who hated departmental meetings but had to suffer them anyway. It was, at least, a familiar mindset. “Lady Elisandar, Lady Sariat—would you give us a moment?”

Lady Elisandar’s head came up like a dog that had heard a suspicious noise. “Milady, I really must object—”

“Noted.”

“It simply isn’t done, a lady of your position meeting privately with—”

“Also noted.”

“And your health, which Doctor Dourwin specifically said requires—”

“Lady Elisandar.” Teri looked at her sharply. “Enough. Please wait outside.”

There was a brief, expressive pause in which Lady Elisandar communicated, without words, that she was objecting and that she expected this objection to be remembered, but that she was nevertheless going as ordered. She gathered herself with the dignity of a small ship in a headwind and made her exit. Lady Sariat followed with rather more grace, pausing only to smile encouragingly at Roos.

The door clicked shut.

Theo, who had been watching Roos from the bed, let out a low sound that was not quite a growl.

:I still don’t like him.: It was not new information.

“I know,” she said back. “Behave.”

Roos looked at Theo with a wary expression, just short of suspicious, before setting his ledger on the chair nearest the door and crouched down to Theo’s eye level with easy confidence.

“Hello,” he said to Theo, directly, as if this were a normal thing to do. He held out a hand, palm up, and waited.

Theo stared at him.

Roos did not move.

Theo leaned forward and sniffed his hand. Then he sat back and looked at Teri.

:He smells strange,: Theo reported. :But he’s not being mean about it.:

Teri filed that away and watched Roos straighten up. He hadn’t looked at her while he was engaging with Theo, but he looked at her now and gave her a polite bow.

“You wanted to discuss something, Milday?”

“I did.” She picked up the tea that had been going cold on her bed tray. “I have a few questions.”

“Questions?” He looked insultingly doubtful.

“Yes. When the count returns home, what does he typically want to see first? The grounds, the stores, the accounts, the harvest?”

The question was unexpected enough that Roos blinked a few times before rallying. “The accounts, usually. Then the stables.”

“Not the household?”

“The household reports to him through the accounts.” A slight pause. “He finds direct interaction with staff inefficient.”

The word inefficient landed carefully, clearly advertising the fact that he had chosen it very deliberately over several alternatives. Teri looked at him over her tea cup.

“And the children?”

Something moved across his face, quickly. “He trusts Milady to their education. He sees them when he chooses to.”

“Which is when?”

“When it suits him,” Roos said, and this time she noticed that the neutrality had a harder edge underneath it. They analyzed each other for a moment before she put the tea down and rubbed her arms. The fire had been ignored during all the uproar of her waking up, and the room was quick to chill.

He noticed and went to the fireplace, which had burned down to embers by that point. He crouched beside it, reaching for the poker, and when his hand closed around it—

The temperature dropped.

Not dramatically, or in any way that Teri could have explained to someone who had never heard of air conditioning. But the last of the warmth went out of the room like a candle being cupped, and the shadows in the far corner—which had no reason to be there given the bright morning light coming through the windows—flexed. They wavered like plant fronds, bending toward her. The one cast by the bedpost stretched several inches longer than geometry allowed. Protection, they whispered. Protection.

Roos went very still.

He didn’t look at the shadows directly. He looked at the fire, and then, with carefully peripheral awareness, he looked at her as he let go of the fire iron.

Teri looked back at him, her hands perfectly steady around her tea cup, her face composed while internally she was screaming. She was not thinking about fire irons. She was absolutely not thinking about fire irons.

:You are thinking about the fire iron,: Theo said.

“Shut up.” She glared at Theo.

Roos turned back to the fire. He took a small log from the stack next to the fireplace and used it to stoke the flames, and then stood. When he faced her again his expression was the same careful neutral it had been since he walked in, but his eyes were more attentive than before.

“Is there anything else you need, milady?” he asked, careful and wary.

“Yes. You…noticed.” She waved a hand around.

“I did.”

“That’s new, right?”

“As best to my knowledge; although as you are aware, I have not had the honor of serving Milady directly very often.”

“Right, you are assigned to Ota the buffoon.”

“As you say.” His face was almost unnaturally blank. Well, she had just called his boss a buffoon.

“It is new, and it is weird. Even Dourwin doesn’t know what is going on with my magic.” She flexed her fingers and stared at her hands. “That was my other reason to call for you.”

“Milday?”

“I want you to find me an alchemist. I don’t trust Dourwin to do it, or find anyone competent if he tries.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. She watched him process it, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise before his blank mask fell back into place.

“Has Doctor Dourwin recommended this?” It was a polite way of asking whether this was on doctor’s orders or if “Lady Greyrage” was going rogue. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.

“No. He is a doctor,” she said. “I need an alchemist. Someone who can test magical meridians and tell me what’s actually happening with my alignment without hedging everything in so much professional jargon just to protect his ass.”

He coughed in surprise.

“You know I’m right. I need answers, not fawning half-truths. I figured if there was anyone who could find me an alchemist discreetly, it would be you.” True enough, she figured.

“Discreetly,” he repeated.

“Yes. Discreetly, meaning in this case, someone who doesn’t report directly to my husband.”

There it was. She watched him take in what she wasn’t saying, the slight suggestion of rebellion against the Count Ferdiff Allisar. He was quiet for a moment, his face giving nothing away, which she expected and reluctantly admired. Her poker face had never even been half that good, alas. Budget meetings would have gone much more smoothly if it had.

“I may know someone,” he said carefully. “It would take a few days to arrange.”

“A few days is acceptable, but no longer.” She had three weeks before a fire iron and an alignment shift meltdown that had so far only manifested as cats and shadows stretching strangely, and she was going to need every one of those days.

“Do you need, ah, anything else?” He almost looked amused, and she was having a hard time continuing to mistrust him.

“Not today.” She set down her tea. “The alchemist, when you have something arranged. And Roos—” She waited until he’d looked up. “Concerning the household accounts. Bring them to me tomorrow.”

“Milady?” He was starting to look genuinely scandalized, which she marked down as a win.

“Yes. After all, the Spring Gala is in about three weeks, and I’m sure Ota is being extravagant.”

He held her gaze for a moment. Then he picked up his ledger from the chair.

“Of course, milady,” he said, then bowed and left.

Teri sat for a moment in the quiet. The shadows had gone back to their correct proportions. The fire was burning steadily again.

:He noticed,: Theo said.

“Hard not to, when my magic is acting out like that.”

:Is that good or bad?:

Teri considered the question with the seriousness it deserved.

“Ask me again in a few weeks,” she said.

---

NEXT: Wildings, Redux

---

Thank you for reading! 🎊 I’d love your comments and feedback! ☕

---

Visit my website kimbooyork.net for more stories!

Find KimBoo online: Notes • Bluesky • Tumblr • Facebook • House of York

Support my work: Ko-fi • PayPal