Continuing off this, again trying to keep the segments shorter (plus immediately after this is a part I might cut or move towards the end of the scene). Where I start to establish the central conceit of “Okay, Amabel worked for Aquaman’s family. But like, if we replaced Orm with Ivan Vorpatril.”
…
Amabel started guffawing. “I promise this is funny,” she wheezed in-between breaths as she struggled to curtail her laughter, the memories already overpowering her.
Gislin already thought the story was mildly silly, and interesting to hear of Amabel’s homeland. But the sometimes mermaid was bent double on the cart bench, laughing at private thoughts. Patiently he waited.
“In the bed in the center of the room I can see a man; the bottom half of his body is covered by bed sheets but the top half is bare. The man in the bed – that a teenage me is discreetly ogling, I’ll admit- is Prince Res, and he groans and shouts at his brother to turn around and close the door behind him. Here I am, innocent girl from the Blue Island, in the presence of my royalty, these infamous princes that I have heard stories of, and they are shouting half-naked at each other. Well, King Isore was completely dressed, if not in formal shell. Prince Res, though the bed sheets covered it, was quite obviously naked. So, half. Without his warhelm and steel mailcoat, Prince Res looks very young and soft. Attractive but slim, positively slight compared to King Isore, who you remember is a bull seal of a man, the sort of muscles that they make for sculptures of Moon Hunter. Stand him next to his half-brother and you begin to see a resemblance in the face. The rumors had confused which of the two brothers had pale blonde coloring. Confused many things about them, or didn’t supply me with the sweeter, outrageous stories.” Amabel mimicked an exaggerated pout of disappointment until she earned a smile from Gislin.
“Prince Res, still bleary-eyed from sleep, asks his brother if Iro is in immediate danger of invasion, and receiving a negative, removes his weight from his elbows and falls back into the bed, ready to return to sleeping. He, Prince Res, was General of Iro’s army, the one to lead our main forces, the fleets of – oh wait, you would not know what they are. Our knights. But not horses – in Iro the creatures we used for battle mounts were…what would you call them? I know humans have names for them. They are like whales, comparable in size with even the great squid-eaters depending on the type, and like whales do not have gills to filter breath through the water but must surface to breathe. The rumors that our armies ride upon sharks is false,” Amabel scoffed. “Sharks are too stupid. Curious creatures, love to be petted, can be bribed with food. But dumb as sheep and twice as skittish, worthless in battle. Our war mounts are the most terrible untainted creatures on this side of the Doors. Pfft, sharks.”
Tag: original fiction
Even More Self-indulgent Writing, Mosasaurs and Murder
Continuing off this, again trying to keep the segments shorter (plus immediately after this is a part I might cut or move towards the end of the scene). Where I start to establish the central conceit of “Okay, Amabel worked for Aquaman’s family. But like, if we replaced Orm with Ivan Vorpatril.”
…
Amabel started guffawing. “I promise this is funny,” she wheezed in-between breaths as she struggled to curtail her laughter, the memories already overpowering her.
Gislin already thought the story was mildly silly, and interesting to hear of Amabel’s homeland. But the sometimes mermaid was bent double on the cart bench, laughing at private thoughts. Patiently he waited.
“In the bed in the center of the room I can see a man; the bottom half of his body is covered by bed sheets but the top half is bare. The man in the bed – that a teenage me is discreetly ogling, I’ll admit- is Prince Res, and he groans and shouts at his brother to turn around and close the door behind him. Here I am, innocent girl from the Blue Island, in the presence of my royalty, these infamous princes that I have heard stories of, and they are shouting half-naked at each other. Well, King Isore was completely dressed, if not in formal shell. Prince Res, though the bed sheets covered it, was quite obviously naked. So, half. Without his warhelm and steel mailcoat, Prince Res looks very young and soft. Attractive but slim, positively slight compared to King Isore, who you remember is a bull seal of a man, the sort of muscles that they make for sculptures of Moon Hunter. Stand him next to his half-brother and you begin to see a resemblance in the face. The rumors had confused which of the two brothers had pale blonde coloring. Confused many things about them, or didn’t supply me with the sweeter, outrageous stories.” Amabel mimicked an exaggerated pout of disappointment until she earned a smile from Gislin.
“Prince Res, still bleary-eyed from sleep, asks his brother if Iro is in immediate danger of invasion, and receiving a negative, removes his weight from his elbows and falls back into the bed, ready to return to sleeping. He, Prince Res, was General of Iro’s army, the one to lead our main forces, the fleets of – oh wait, you would not know what they are. Our knights. But not horses – in Iro the creatures we used for battle mounts were…what would you call them? I know humans have names for them. They are like whales, comparable in size with even the great squid-eaters depending on the type, and like whales do not have gills to filter breath through the water but must surface to breathe. The rumors that our armies ride upon sharks is false,” Amabel scoffed. “Sharks are too stupid. Curious creatures, love to be petted, can be bribed with food. But dumb as sheep and twice as skittish, worthless in battle. Our war mounts are the most terrible untainted creatures on this side of the Doors. Pfft, sharks.”
Amabel paused and pondered. “How far north was your village, Gislin? The one that you and Tenny came from? Did you have to worry about the river lizards?”
Gislin’s complexion was too dark for his face to noticeably pale in fear, but the widening of his eyes conveyed the shock. “No, but I know of them. That monster was what your people rode into battle?”
The mermaid tapped her fingers against her lap. “Yes and no. What creatures would best describe it? As a badger is to a bear. General Res and the forces of Iro held a reputation built not on unfounded fear. One would not face a war beast in open water unless similarly mounted. Or able to control the waves themselves.
“Now King Isore demands that his brother look at me, to check one more time that he does not recognize me. I think that the king was still disappointed that I was not one of the scouts. He was worried about Gawne and Claren. I forget what the Prince says in response, or if he just groans at his older brother the king. And then King Isore changes tack and asks me, “So how are you with children?” Well, I am completely flabbergasted, thinking to myself that question is irrelevant.” Amabel smirked. “It was not.
“King Isore turns back to his brother. “We have a new girl to go to training with my wife, but I think she’ll be a better fit with Sis. Gut feeling says she’ll do better at the smaller scale works, unlike Gara or Gawne. And if she has mettle, she might survive a few days as nursemaid.” Now I am incredibly confused. There is a quality of adolescence to the half-brothers in how they are treating another which I did not expect, but that is only the tip of my shock this morning.
“From the side door of the room side enters a woman, and only for her extreme similarity to Queen Garabel do I recognize her as the twin sister of the Queen. Hira of the Seal Rock Islands is an infamous figure still in the Navel of the World. Sea witch, your ballads would label her, and be accurate.” Amabel sighed. “I must backtrack in my story and explain some secrets about Queen Gara and the women of the Seal Rock Islands.” Amabel pursed her lips. Cowing her reluctance and distaste, she explained, “There is a magic in controlling water, pulling it or repelling it away, granting it a great viscosity so it forms shapes or draws into itself away from people. A rare talent, one I thought was our version of the taint-gifts until I came to Iro and learned that it could be taught at great difficulty. I still cannot do it, except for two related tricks, and both are dangerous for outsiders to know of.” Amabel paused. “One is an assassination technique. It is an ugly way to kill someone, and takes more effort than a knife to the gut or a strangulation cord. And it is too distinctive to be mistaken for any other method.” The second pause was longer, and the breaths that Amabel drew rattled with uneven sound. “It is to pull water from a living body, and I have done it before. I swear I never will again.”
Gislin squeezed Amabel’s hand in comfort and support. “They taught you how to assassinate people?”
“They were taught how,” Amabel explained. “Garabel and Hirabel. All royal women of the Seal Rocks. And when Rosser betrothed his daughter to the heir of Iro, he was sending her to kill their king on their wedding night. Like the story of the three daughters of the Weeping King, married off to three sons of a rival king, and the elder two sisters cursed after death for going through with the plan. And like that story with the youngest daughter, Garabel could not.”
“I thought the Weeping King had fifteen daughters?” Rohese asked.
“Fif-What preposterous story is that? No, it was only three. And if Gael told you otherwise, then that is the worst of their inaccuracies. How thus did a story mutate, to come to fifteen? Next you shall tell me there were fifty daughters.
“Enough of false stories; I tell you truth. Gawne was the one to tell me some of the details, to cover what the king and queen did not tell me themselves. That the queen escaped Iro to search the seas for the children of Isopa, that she found them on the coast, standing knee-deep in water red with blood of men sent by others who wished that neither young man step again into the ocean, this was all well-known in Iro. That Garabel entreated Isore to come with her back to Iro and fight for his rightful claim, lest he live the remainder of his life dodging attacks like these. That she rose out of the bloody water with her red hair loose around her shoulders, hands outreached in supplication. She was the one to lead Isore to see the charnel nets where enemies of the nobles and undesirables were purged. Those I will give you no details, Gislin, only that I am grateful that the war never reached my island, and that brutality is no isolated trait. Garabel, heir of the ancient enemy of Iro, sent in false faith, now she earnestly pleaded for its salvation. After nearly a decade of war in Iro because there was no one firmly in control, Garabel rejected the schemes of power-grasping men. Even before she loved Isore, she no longer plotted his death. She would aid him in claiming his birthright, see him rule in peace and stability, if only he came with her.
“Prince Res, who spent his childhood watching his mother wither under an abusive marriage and a cabal of council members and nobles channel authority into their hands, wanted nothing more with Iro. Garabel’s tales of the horrors happening in his home did not surprise him or outwardly move his heart. He did not love the human lands more than the home islands, or think them with all their still-strange customs much safer, but until he was twelve, Prince Res had lived in pampered, lonely misery. Friendless, confined to the palace, as much a prisoner of it as Garabel. It was then that he learned to idolize the idea of his brother, as much as his mother Isopa clung to a perfect hope of the child and lover that she had been forced to abandon. He was unwilling to offer up his remaining family to the altar that was,” Amabel paused for a phrase to convey, “Iro’s bloody crab pot. This was during the period of the Pure One Revolts, so peace anywhere was rare to find. The rebellions had nothing in common, but I wonder if they did not somehow feed each other.
“I have not tasted his liver, so I do not know if Res would have sought the throne if Isore had not, if the kingship was framed as the only way to keep his elder half-brother safe. He was raised as Iro’s heir, expecting the kingship, while Isore did not until his mother reunited with him. Not that Res, after he found a new life as a commoner’s stepson and reveled in freedom from expectations, was eager to assert his claim for any reason but that chain of obligation. But Isore’s heart was noble and compassionate. For the common people of Iro, and for love of his brother and vengeance for his father and mother, he followed Gara. And because Isore did, Prince Res did.
“In battle the brothers were terrible foes, and Garabel no less a force. One should not bring lightning into the sea. The war was not swift, nor clean, but by the end their enemies drowned.”
“Still I find it strange that mermaids can drown.”
“We are not fish,” Amabel said. “No more than the dolphin or sea turtle. It just takes longer than a human. And a harpoon or blade to the gut, or a cyclone upon the waves, does expedite a death.
“Now when Isore was enthroned on the Pillar of Iro, he expected Garabel to remain at his side as queen, and she too desired this. But she could not wed him without confessing the original intention of why she was sent. Even if this caused Isore to reject her, she would not return to Nivel, and she would continue to dedicate her life to protecting him from harm. The words that Isore said in response to her confession were very romantic, I think. “Cannot the lie be truth?” Isore asked, and Garabel replied with, “My love for you is not and never has been a lie.”
“Now Prince Res, learning of Seal Rock Islands’ duplicity and Garabel’s training, was not pleased with her continued presence. But he could not deny how mutually besotted his brother and Garabel were, and that her extreme devotion to Isore was equal to if not surpassing his. But the leader of the Seal Rock Islands, copper-tailed Nivel, and his conniving advisors, chief among them Garabel and Hirabel’s own grandmother, coveted not in the slightest that Gara marry Isore. Wroth they were that she had fought beside him and displayed the sheer size and scope of the power that she wielded during the war on his behalf, and that Iro’s ascendancy to once more dominate the ocean was all but assured with their union. So Hira-”
“Her sister was sent to remind Gara to finish the job, or do it herself?” Gislin surmised.
Self-Indulgent Writing, More Mermaid Side-Story
More long post WIP original story, directly continuing off of this post. Stopped at a point so the post would be shorter than the first snippet (five pages is not a snippet, I know).
…
“I enter the dry hall of the king, my shell dress still dripping wet, which is a faux pas, and I could not describe to you my hair. All my journey I fret that I must make a good impression, and here is how I arrive. The dry hall is wood, semi-open to the elements, unlike other portions of the palace complex which are of coral and stone. Had I been escorted to one of those rooms, my anxiety would have overpowered me. But I was tired from swimming and determined to have this position at court, to learn under Queen Gara, so the magnitude of what surrounds me is deadened. So dark is it, I cannot not see the details of wealth around me. There are curtains of sea-wool, like gold made into mist, hanging from the ceiling. Just enough of that cloth to make a pair of lady’s gloves is worth a lord’s ransom in your land. Metal objects, which are more rare and precious in the islands, decorate the room, and the hinges and furnishings on the doors are made of brass. The first time I saw one of your temples with doors of solid bronze, every carving cast in metal and not carved, I sat on the steps and just stared for hours in sheer wonder. But the palace of Iro was the first wonderful and wealthy place that I came to. What else can I say to describe it that morning? Flowers are grown around the outer walls to provide a sweet scent to combat the scent of salt. The winds bring it in through the open panels. I have found only a few perfumes that come close to matching those flowers. And how strongly a smell is, or its qualities, is highly dependent on my current form. Scent memory is therefore strange for me. Alas, it would have been nice to stand there for while and dry, but I am immediately shuffled onward.
“The king himself, not any master of servants, is the one to collect me from the guard escort. He wears no crown; King Isore rarely did, but he did not need to, for how recognizable he is.” Amabel paused. “The man that Great Lady Manon spoke to in Stonegift, her banker with the stupid feathered hat, you recall him?”
“I liked his hat,” Gislin said.
Self-Indulgent Writing, More Mermaid Side-Story
More long post WIP original story, directly continuing off of this post. Stopped at a point so the post would be shorter than the first snippet (five pages is not a snippet, I know).
…
“I enter the dry hall of the king, my shell dress still dripping wet, which is a faux pas, and I could not describe to you my hair. All my journey I fret that I must make a good impression, and here is how I arrive. The dry hall is wood, semi-open to the elements, unlike other portions of the palace complex which are of coral and stone. Had I been escorted to one of those rooms, my anxiety would have overpowered me. But I was tired from swimming and determined to have this position at court, to learn under Queen Gara, so the magnitude of what surrounds me is deadened. So dark is it, I cannot not see the details of wealth around me. There are curtains of sea-wool, like gold made into mist, hanging from the ceiling. Just enough of that cloth to make a pair of lady’s gloves is worth a lord’s ransom in your land. Metal objects, which are more rare and precious in the islands, decorate the room, and the hinges and furnishings on the doors are made of brass. The first time I saw one of your temples with doors of solid bronze, every carving cast in metal and not carved, I sat on the steps and just stared for hours in sheer wonder. But the palace of Iro was the first wonderful and wealthy place that I came to. What else can I say to describe it that morning? Flowers are grown around the outer walls to provide a sweet scent to combat the scent of salt. The winds bring it in through the open panels. I have found only a few perfumes that come close to matching those flowers. And how strongly a smell is, or its qualities, is highly dependent on my current form. Scent memory is therefore strange for me. Alas, it would have been nice to stand there for while and dry, but I am immediately shuffled onward.
“The king himself, not any master of servants, is the one to collect me from the guard escort. He wears no crown; King Isore rarely did, but he did not need to, for how recognizable he is.” Amabel paused. “The man that Great Lady Manon spoke to in Stonegift, her banker with the stupid feathered hat, you recall him?”
“I liked his hat,” Gislin said.
“You have terrible taste in colors,” Amabel snapped. “Well, not him, but the bodyguard accompanying him. You remember how tall and broad that man was, with the scar on his eyebrow and the pale eyes and short beard. Man who looked as if he could bend steel without a taint-gift to give him strength- that is the picture of a man who looks like King Isore when he walks on two legs. Under the waves, my king is green with bands of brass and gold, sometimes dulled, and somethings the colors so vibrant as to be garish to the senses. His tail as long and powerful as a pilot whale, with a row of short spikes down his back.”
“Is that big?” Rohese whispered to Great Lady Manon. The old lady riding beside her shrugged her shoulders.
“Child, I have never seen the ocean. Ask the priest.”
Amabel continued to describe her first meeting with her king, offering the token and name-dropping an institution that Gislin thought might be the name of a school. “Now what I did not know at the time was that Iro was anticipating an attack soon from one of its enemies. Not Seal Rocks, one of the corrupted men. They aren’t the plague that they are in the farthest reaches of the Rim, but if they reach the inner currents of the Navel, then the forest-taint is strong indeed and their allies terrible. And one does not tempt to call anything connected to ghosts that close to the Doors of the Rat Queen. May mites eat through your skin!” Amabel swore, then turned in her seat to holler at their driver. “Foul enough that you ventured into the Shadow Forest, Urwin. Fool priests, thinking your songs will keep you safe from the iron rats, and that you would not stir up something to follow you back into the living lands.” Urwin silently accepted her abuse, playing dumb and mute. Her reprimands were nothing new to him. “Never for me, that place. Too akin to the abyssal depths of the ocean, where no sunlight can reach. The void-taint is strong down there, stronger than the furthest ends of the earth, for the same reason, and only evil stirs it up to the surface waters.
“King Isore was expecting reports of their movements from spies sent earlier that week, including the premier students of Queen Gara. Sweet boys, the pair of them. There was a time when they were both enamoured with me, and I may have married one of them, had I stayed in Iro. An odd thought, nowadays.
“The King looks me over, mistakes my token for the pyrite shells in which we embed sound to send messages instead of writing letters, and shouts that I follow him to give my report. “You’re early!” he shouts. I think nothing of it until he asks for status updates from the Queen’s prized student, Gawne, or if Claren thinks his errant human father, a notorious pirate, is involved in this. As of yet I did not know these young men. We confuse each other, for the king brings up spells that the queen will teach me, ones that I would have known had I been whom he thought I was, ones I thought that I was here to learn.
“Queen Gara is on the neighboring island. I do not meet her this day or their son, Prince Ias. Had she been the one to greet me, no confusion would have arisen. Though I do meet everyone else. Yes, you could say I get an introduction to the majority of the royal family that morning. Quite an introduction.” Amabel giggled. “Meeting the royal family. Yes.” Amabel giggled some more.
“So, King Isore bids me follow him, and I can discern that he is irate, though not with me, which is the sole reason I followed and didn’t try to escape. He was very genial in person. Oddly mercurial of moods, in that unlike the rest of his family his temper was not hot and quick to rise, at least not since the days of his youth, and when he wished, he could be boisterous company, enough that you would forget that there was a shrewd mind behind that smile. But then prone to fits of solemn melancholy and self-isolation. Still, my story is not solely of him.
“King Isore starts bellowing for his brother, Prince Res. This is early in the morning, only the second chime, the sun has barely begun to lighten the horizon. He marches to a separate wing of the palace, low tide rooms, shouting for his brother to wake and explain my presence. I continue to stammer that I was from Blue Island, sent to be a student to his wife, Queen Gara, for the talent I promised. Not a similarly named operation that their scouts were tracking for a reason that was never fully explained to me even long after it happened, but that’s life. One mixup in communications and for some reason that morning King Isore mistook me for one of his brother’s war spies. And I was a skinny girl child, no muscle tone, a shell dress of cheap cockle, weaponless, but he must have mistaken the veneer of courage on top of my fear for the mettle of a warrior.”
“Oh how ever could anyone mistake you for a secretly vicious sneak?” Gislin teased, and Amabel raised her shifted talons in mock outrage.
“These teeth have killed far more men than you could ever dream to, little wolf child. Hush and listen.” Amabel continued her story as if without interruption, and Gislin was starting to wonder if she had imbued wine earlier, for there was a quality of drunken ramble to her animated storytelling. “Thankfully, King Isore stops to listen to me, realises his error, and takes it with good humor. “Oh, you’re that girl,” he says to me. “This is fine. I need to take you to see my brother anyway. Part of your new tasks.” Waves his hand airly and keeps charging down the hallway, and I’m stumbling after him getting my heels wet until we get to the proper half-submerged part of the palace and swim through the final set of doors. He flings open the doors to what is obviously a private bedchamber with a splash -I would try to explain to you proper architecture another time- and shouts for Prince Res to wake.”
self-indulgent writing ( + little mermaid soundtrack)
stretching the creaking writing muscles, posting bits of the original fic stuff (that slush pile of ideas and AUs for canons I don’t want to officially play with, so I blend them into a more ‘generic fantasy’ world,
master-tagged: that dumb rose story
).
Tried to make it more or less understandable as a standalone, but is a bit of a sequel to this bit with the werewolf boy. Story within a story, hopefully funny towards the end. It’s long, so breaking it into parts.
…
“Boy, get up here!”
The stretch of road ran through semi-arable land, too dry for crops and only a few scattered trees, but the barrier-markers were well-tended and thick with green moss, so towns could not be far off if the cleansings were applied so frequently. There were the sounds of bleating goats in the distance, even if the animals or their shepherds were not visible, and at least one bird hidden in the grass or perched in one of the distant trees was making a valiant effort to fill the quiet with song. Aside from their party, the road was deserted. The sense of calm isolation fit their mood. Gael was asleep in the cart, covered in a blanket that covered all but the top of their head and one pale arm curled around in the pose used for sculptures for displays of extreme grief. With the bandages around their fingers and the lingering scent of the poultices that Great Lady Manon had applied to their wounds, it was a disconcerting image, but Gael’s sleep seemed untroubled, and with their injuries they needed the uninterrupted rest for healing. Rohese knew her feelings of guilt were excessive, and Gael would be the first to reprimand her for them, but of their group, one needed more reassurance.
Amabel called Gislin to climb up onto the gently rocking cart, patting at the cleared spot she made for him on the chest in the back of the vehicle. “Come talk with me, boy. Rest your feet.” The young man dropped his eyes, mumbling some unintelligible words about how unnecessary it was for him to break from walking, even if the rest of their party was riding astride a horse or on the cart. He pulled at the corners of his mouth in what was intended to be one of his customary blindingly wide smiles, but the effort failed. Amabel tapped again the seat next to her, calling as one did a cat. “Get up here, Gislin.” The tapping gesture definitely transformed into a pounding noise. “I shan’t shout to you, and I’ve not the leg strength to walk this awful road. Why ever did I think it a good idea to come this far into the Rim? Aie, the words I would yell at my younger self – I thought I left such stupid decisions behind me two hundred years ago. Now stop skulking and join me. I have a story to tell you.”
Gislin hesitated. “Gael is the one to like stories. Perhaps you can wait until they wake and tell them.”
“No,” Amabel snapped. “This is for you.”
self-indulgent writing ( + little mermaid soundtrack)
stretching the creaking writing muscles, posting bits of the original fic stuff (that slush pile of ideas and AUs for canons I don’t want to officially play with, so I blend them into a more ‘generic fantasy’ world,
master-tagged: that dumb rose story
).
Tried to make it more or less understandable as a standalone, but is a bit of a sequel to this bit with the werewolf boy. Story within a story, hopefully funny towards the end. It’s long, so breaking it into parts.
…
“Boy, get up here!”
The stretch of road ran through semi-arable land, too dry for crops and only a few scattered trees, but the barrier-markers were well-tended and thick with green moss, so towns could not be far off if the cleansings were applied so frequently. There were the sounds of bleating goats in the distance, even if the animals or their shepherds were not visible, and at least one bird hidden in the grass or perched in one of the distant trees was making a valiant effort to fill the quiet with song. Aside from their party, the road was deserted. The sense of calm isolation fit their mood. Gael was asleep in the cart, covered in a blanket that covered all but the top of their head and one pale arm curled around in the pose used for sculptures for displays of extreme grief. With the bandages around their fingers and the lingering scent of the poultices that Great Lady Manon had applied to their wounds, it was a disconcerting image, but Gael’s sleep seemed untroubled, and with their injuries they needed the uninterrupted rest for healing. Rohese knew her feelings of guilt were excessive, and Gael would be the first to reprimand her for them, but of their group, one needed more reassurance.
Amabel called Gislin to climb up onto the gently rocking cart, patting at the cleared spot she made for him on the chest in the back of the vehicle. “Come talk with me, boy. Rest your feet.” The young man dropped his eyes, mumbling some unintelligible words about how unnecessary it was for him to break from walking, even if the rest of their party was riding astride a horse or on the cart. He pulled at the corners of his mouth in what was intended to be one of his customary blindingly wide smiles, but the effort failed. Amabel tapped again the seat next to her, calling as one did a cat. “Get up here, Gislin.” The tapping gesture definitely transformed into a pounding noise. “I shan’t shout to you, and I’ve not the leg strength to walk this awful road. Why ever did I think it a good idea to come this far into the Rim? Aie, the words I would yell at my younger self – I thought I left such stupid decisions behind me two hundred years ago. Now stop skulking and join me. I have a story to tell you.”
Gislin hesitated. “Gael is the one to like stories. Perhaps you can wait until they wake and tell them.”
“No,” Amabel snapped. “This is for you.”
At the front of the cart, Urwin snorted and pulled at the large straw hat that he had taken to hide his facial scars, flicking the reins. The irascible cart horse ignored Urwin, making no effort to increase its pace.
Gislin sighed and jogged up to the cart. With a lurch he pulled himself up to sit next to Amabel, accidentally stepping on the hem of her long gown and skinning his elbow against the wood. As he hissed and inspected the red welt across his arm, Amabel swatted him. “That will heal quick if you let it. Especially if you transform.”
“I don’t want to,” Gislin muttered, leaning away from the woman.
“It’s not a taint-gift, not as you humans understand it. Not like Urwin’s houndfeet or all the gifts of your friend Tadeo. Not the bear-strength or cat-quick wits. Not even the greensleeve summoning.” Amabel spoke with the firm confidence of a village grandmother, one who would never be cowed or convinced of their error, the type of old woman that was the terror of all her living relatives and feared by those dead for the inevitable day when she would reunite with them. Gislin could easily imagine a mass of wrinkles across her face and her chestnut hair turned gray. It helped that Amabel’s accent was faintly old-fashioned, her vowels periodically different enough to confuse what word she meant to say. “I saw the color of your fur and tasted the scent of star maidens when you transformed, and that means the Mirror Realm, boy, and not just the byproduct of tainted land magic. Not with that cinnabar shade. Stop your shame; you have no call for it. Godswolf on one side you must be, and from what you’ve shared of your history, likely it was your mother. That’s common enough, though people be surprised, how often one of the Wolves go looking for a lover or companions out in the Rim. Part of their nature, it is. One of the reasons the gods’ voices stopped sending as many envoys to this mortal side, to halt the influx back. Oh, the priests say otherwise, and there’s been some horrible complications and unintended consequences.” Here was where Urwin made a dreadfully prolonged choking noise, and Amabel turned around to glare at the ex-priest. “I’m talking to the boy. Listen in if you must, but stay quiet,” she snapped.
Urwin whispered the phrase ‘Pure Ones’, which scared Gislin, but then Amabel grabbed the young man’s hand and pulled his attention back to her.
“Let me tell you of the first family I worked for, before I joined my apostate lady and got banished.”
Rohese interrupted with a shout, “But you are no longer banished, correct? Lady Amabel?”
The older woman turned around in her seat to holler to the riders leading the cart. “I’ve made my amends, fret not. I’ll take you all the way to the Sun Throne and the Door of the Rat Queen myself with clean credentials if we need you, as long as you don’t lose that Key.”
“But we won’t need to go that far,” Gislin said nervously. “Not even all the way to the shore, if we can find the right help.”
“Yes,” Amabel said. “And if that Key is what I think it is, a GodsWolf has already been dispatched to fetch it. So likely soon you’ll meet one of the real ones, and know what a runt you are.”
Gislin’s four-legged form, when he allowed the mercury-bright feeling under his skin to come forth and his bones to twist, was only a foot or so shorter than an elephant, so this statement was not reassuring.
“You worked for a family?”
“As well, much like an apprentice and a housemaid for a princess. Training to be a proper travelling companion for a star maiden, the highest of the Thrice-born. Oh, they have nobles just like you have on this side of the Mirror Sea. Not exactly the same, and some choose to stay on this side, just ocean-side, you see…ah? You know my true nature, Gislin?”
“Mermaid, you showed us back in the river. Though you didn’t have any fish scales on your tail, not at all like the images in the books. And I still don’t understand how you can also be one of the winged messengers.”
“Because we are. Not all. But when we cross the barrier, it is wings on one side and flukes the other. Most that prefer flying stay in the Mirror Realm, and those that like swimming stay in the ocean around the barrier to guard it. It’s part of the reason we call that the Mirror Realm, for all that becomes inverted when you cross without using the Doors of the Rat Queen. Rarely do my people like both forms, so we choose one or the other. I cannot stand not having fingers, even temporarily, so I’m glad my family was one that stayed on this side of the barrier, even if the air stinks of corruption, and it’s more dangerous a home to make. But when I was your age, my family sent me to study. It was a very prestigious opportunity for me.” Amabel smiled, and the hint of condescension that she showed to even Great Lady Manon in the corners of her grins and upturned eyes was beginning to display its roots.
“So, boy, this lord of the family I ventured forth to serve, under great effort from my family to afford my introduction and passage, was one of those fair powerful enough that you’d call him a king. He ruled over many of the islands closest to the barrier circle, on the side compass-aligned to this shore. It’s near impossible for your ships to reach these islands in the Navel of the World, unless they have greensleeve pilots, so I have no reservations telling you of their secrets. There are multiple kingdoms out in the ocean, especially since the Thrice-born felt it best to leave this world and people to their own devices and rarely venture outside of the Mirror Realm. Foul business that has caused- though listen to the old stories and see how the alternative was not much an improvement. Fewer dust armies, for one. But my king- a great man. More worthy of respect than the human emperor you lot have. And if you count the seas around his islands, as we do, and not just the islands, he ruled more than many of your Great Lords, if not the number of people. And his terrority had long been rivals with a smaller group of islands further north. Disputes over trade routes – don’t be surprised! People are people everywhere, even in the Land of the Dead. So, King Isore, he was like you, Gislin. Half. Father was human, some fisherman or shoreman, and his mother of the highest nobles of my people, one with more than a little Godswolf in her heritage. We will intermarry, though they’re such a pack of pricks I don’t see the appeal. You’re sweet though.” Amabel patted Gislin atop his head. “She took her son back, after he had grown, and he inherited the islands and the surrounding oceans. You’d never know he wasn’t full, unless he crossed the barrier and didn’t transform. Could only will forth the tail flukes, but he got some of those forest-taint powers so he was frightfully strong. That scared the warlord neighbor – now there was a bastard that delighted in sinking your human ships. A treaty had been brokered back before Isopa scampered off to betrothe their daughter to her eldest son, and was kept even after Isopa was forced to return to take over duties from her father when he died and the one warlord of the Seal Rocks was deposed by one of his warriors. Nivel didn’t want to lose that opportunity, so he kept old Rosser’s daughters as wards.” Amabel paused. “You look confused.”
Gislin shrugged his shoulders. “You are using these names; I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“And yet you can name the six families that hold electorate privileges to chose your Emperor, if that is not confusing enough,” Amabel said with an eyeroll.
“And two votes held by the priesthood,” Gislin chimed.
“Of which my family had been one,” Urwin almost said, but held his tongue, pretending that he was not closely listening along to this conversation.
Amabel sighed and shoved out her gown with spayed fingers. Looking down at her lap, she began to draw a map with the gestures of her fingers across the taunt blue wool. “In the mists of the ocean near the Navel of the World are the island chains of my people, atop mountains that rise from the ocean floor. Greatest of these is Iro. A string of islands clustered like grapes. The wind is constant above the water, and the trees that grow are small and with wood soft and white. Nothing like your home. Coral of every color grows in the shallows, and the weather is always warm. The sand is multicolored against the black of the stone, glittering like jewels. No kingdom of the sea is more beautiful than Iro. The palace is on the largest island.” Amabel ran her thumb in a tight spiral shape and tapped back and forth, as if she was drawing the shapes of mazes and towers in a bed of sand.
“Now, Isopa was the king’s only daughter, and she had a son with a human who found her washed on the mortal shores after a great battle in which she defeated a sea serpent that was terrorizing his village. He nursed her back to health, she gave him a son to raise; that son was Isore. A very romantic story, the tale was popular in ballads in the shore regions when I first came ashore. Gael might still know of them.” A sly look Amabel gave to Gislin, analyzing his face for any shifts in expression. “Familiar this sounds to you?”
“A bit,” Gislin mumbled. He had never learned the story of how his father, a fisher of shrimp on the flat beaches of his birth town, a peasant with a horse, net, and a single room hut, had attracted a wife that could turn into a wolf.
“But Isopa’s father grew ill, and she had to return to Iro to rule, though she wished not. Her people and king demanded that she marry and produce an heir. They would not accept her bastard child. Isore was left behind, and he grew believing his mother had undesired him.” Amabel balled her hands into fists, the nails of her uncovered thumbs thickening into the yellow claws. Gislin wrinkled his nose at the sharp transformation of her scent. “She had to marry a foul man named Courmene and bore a second son, Res.”
“It troubles me to hear the behavior of forced marriages is in practice even among the messengers of the gods,” Manon said gravely.
Amabel shrugged. Her hands had returned to their soft skin, her scent human-like once more. “It is not common, not as it is for you human nobles. Now,” Amabel jabbed a finger into her lap, “to the northwest is the Seal Rock Islands. Barren islands for the most part. Rosser was ruler when Isopa was crowned, and he had two infant daughters, a pair of twins. Gartrite and Hirie, but everyone called them Gara and Hira. Or Garabel and Hirabel. Garabel was the elder, and the one promised in treaty to marry the heir of Iro to broker a peace treaty. The Seal Rocks is no better than a pirate den, and back when my ladies were only a few years old, Nivel usurped rule of those islands. Because the conflict limited itself to short internal strife, and how it is common for the Seal Rocks to replace their warlord in duels every few years, none of the other islands got involved, and Garabel remained betrothed to Isopa’s son.”
“Which would have been Res, not Isore?” Gislin asked to clarify.
“The wording stated that it be Isopa’s heir, and she always maintained that was her eldest son. Which pleased not her husband, and they fought often. Isopa had not been popular, not in Iro. Famed for her physical beauty, admired for her one action of physical strength. But not listened to, not thought of as clever or considerate or dedicated or strong. Finally the worst happened – though I confess to you that I learned the family secret and it was not Isopa who killed Courmene, though most would believe it of her. Not the final blow. This was when Res would have been but twelve. She took her son and fled to her human lover and first son. There was civil strife throughout Iro. Another family attempted to consolidate control in the islands and only succeeded in ruling half of them. The Seal Rock Islands under Nivel were tempted to invade, but Garabel was still a hostage in the royal palace. Ah, you see, Isopa barely escaped with her one son; she could not have taken the girl with her and succeed in escaping the islands, plus Garabel was surrounded by household troops with her from her homeland. The squabbling leaders of Iro could not dare allow harm to come to their most important bargaining chip. I was not born yet, but my parents remember these events. Nivel did not wish the marriage to go through, and that is part of another secret I shall impart, but the promise of alliance was popular in the Seal Rocks. And Rosser was remembered fondly, so his legacy still protected his daughters.
“I am from the Blue Island.” Here Amabel pointed to the outside of her left thigh. “It is just within territory claimed by Iro, but escaped any of the fighting. Nothing but seaweed farmers. Inconsequential. Other places were not so fortunate. The civil unrest grew so terrible that it attracted the attention of the lords in the Mirror Realm, who were most displeased. Isopa and her sons were recalled, only another…ah, partisan force found them first, ugly business occurred, and there was …a small war. Very small. Only one hurricane hit your shores.” The smile that Amabel gave was as false as those Gislin had offered today, but for a highly different reason. “Garabel had been the one to find her wayward betrothed as he searched the seas with his brother in revenge, and she helped to get him on the throne. Many ballads about that journey, also romantic, a little more violent. The Navel of the World was not safe for human ships to sail upon, more so than the norm, for those few years until Isore and Garabel were enthroned on the Pillar of Iro. And much of the credit must go to Queen Gara. She would approve of Rohese. They are kindred spirits.”
“What of Res?”
“Prince Res idolized his older brother, and the two were very protective of each other. What resentment they might have felt for the other’s existence was played up for outsiders. That in fact is part of my story. But by the time I came to court in Iro, King Isore’s rule was well-established, and a cornerstone of that rule was the army led by his younger brother. Even in the Blue Island we knew of fierce Res, as vicious as the sea wolves. And the Good King Isore who mended peace with the Mirror Realm and had friendship with the fleets of the greensleeves, so that we could have safety above and below the waves, and Queen Garabel, who could handle the magic that is so thick at the waters close to the barrier. There the way that magic pools and twists means that your priestly chants and cleansing rituals would never hold. It is not tainted with void-malice as it is the further you travel from the Navel, but the mists…” Amabel trailed off, sucking in a deep breath through her open mouth. Her eyes unfocused as she stared into something that was not on their horizon. “I do not miss it, Gislin,” she said softly. “As dry as these lands are, and as much woe and pain as humans have caused me, as wretched as it can be, I love them more than the sea. Unsteady ankles and all.”
The cart hit a rut in the road and jolted, knocking Amabel out of her glum spate. With revived false cheer she slapped her lap and turned brightly to Gislin. “And your pigswill roads! Enough! Back to my story!
“Promising children were often sent as students, as you send your children to the priesthood. Like your adopted father, Tenny. I was one such, and partly because of a shipwreck bounty, I was sent with a token of apprenticeship, brand-new belongings, cobbled-together lessons on etiquette, and high hopes. A whale pod escorted me to Iro, but it was a little passed the middle of the night by the time we reached the shoreline of the main island. It was just as beautiful in the moonlight as the dawn. Palace guardsmen recognize who I am and bide me follow them to the palace to meet with King Isore. Formality is different when solely among my kin, and Isore was raised a peasant. Truly you are alike, Gislin. If you were a little lighter, older, and not skinny as a great crane. Still, some propriety should be observed, and…” Amabel trailed off in her story, “ah, remembering this. Listen, I was mortified when while it was occurring, but it is quite funny to look back on.”
“One of these stories,” Gislin said with a drawl.
“Yes, Boy. It’s one of these stories.”
more greensails
yeah it’s more of the self-indulgent more or less original fiction universe stuff that at least in this case is really just highly AU Green Lantern stuff. A few years after this post, two short moments with AU Not!John and Not!Guy and a longer scene with Not!Hal and Not!Carol.
…
Gui smiled and made a pulling motion with arms outstretched and elbows locked, and green flowed off his arms, leaving them bare. The strain and cords of his muscles were clear as bright green cables formed in his tightly clenched hands, pulling against these newly-formed vine-like ropes. Each rope stretched to either side of the riverbank, and at their ends the green fog was solidifying into mirror-match shapes. At first the summons seemed like giant, inconveniently placed topiaries tethering to the man on the river barge. Their forms were vaguely boar-like but longer-limbed and with a more defined neck and head as much akin to a deer as a pig, except for their strange and long down-curved snouts. At roughly the size of small elephants, no one watching from the riverbanks was foolish enough to approach. Then those heads lowered, shoulders bunching, and legs began to move, three-toed feet digging into the mud at the top of the embankment. Like canal mules the behemoths from the greensails began to tow the river barge, propelling the ship in absence of the wind. Gui grunted and braced his leg against a strut running width-wise across the deck near the prow, dragging the ship along with him in a display of terrifying brute strength.
…
Jan pulled out a leather tube from the rack in his personal quarters and opened the case to reveal a roll of yellowed vellum. Carefully he unrolled the chart and consulted the map of malleable river courses, noting how the loops of the banks had shifted over the years, silently pleased with himself at the familiar sensation of reading a detailed survey map. He had consulted maps like these when plotting tunnels and countermeasures for his sappers and engineers of sabotage in the army, had even once worked to divert a much smaller river. His men bitched about the danger of drowning. He had not lost any of them in that undertaking, and still had not lost any of his men these days to the Green River. Jan measured the distance between various locks, tapping his finger against the symbols for older locks and running a thumb over the meandering loops where the point bars formed. Satisfied that the records corroborated his memory, Jan re-rolled the map and shoved it back in its oiled leather case, then pulled out the map for the rivermouth of the Green River and a city map for {}. Tide markings still irritated him to read, moreso because whoever the scribe was for this set of maps had atrocious handwriting on the miniscule scale, and Jan needed a piece of curved glass to read the measurements for high and low tide and the times for the correct time of month. The map for the mouth of the Black River had an author in possession of logic and excellent penmanship who recorded all tidal information in a separate chart on the back of the vellum. The maps for the Pearl River, with Lutet only a few miles inland from its estuary, were of excellent quality. Jan lobbied for more shipping voyages from {} to Reevesend, the small city at the mouth of the Pearl River. Mercantile opportunities were secondary to the strength of accurate knowledge, at least deep in the heart of this meticulous veteran. Jan lost men during his years in the army, the first knight he served under topping the list of his dead, and knew overeager ambitions and poor planning as a root cause of those casualties as much as the enemy or all the various diseases that crawled behind an army.
Holding out an arm and whistling a short marching tune, the fabric of his left forearm disappeared and reappeared as a floating serpent with serrated fins and a pair of delicately spiraling antlers on a sword-beaked face. “Hello, Scout,” Jan said, scratching the summoned shape under the jaw like a pet cat. They weren’t alive, were not true summons in the strictest sense but images dreamt up by their holders, but Jan indulged himself by treating the greencloth creatures as if they were separate from him. “No more sieges.” Jan smiled.
…
Heral sidled up to his boss and whispered to Rothaide over her shoulder, wondering how obvious it would be from the other side of the warehouse that he was talking to her and not just inspecting the workmen loading the docked ship. “Master Jowell pestering you again to enter a more binding formal partnership?”
“If by that you mean a marriage proposal, then yes,” Rothaide said without turning to face Heral.
“Are they still pressing you on that?”
Rothaide snorted. “They never stopped, Harry. Everyone in the guild desires I marry them, or their son, or some impoverished cousin. They can swallow a wife or widow as one of their members, but that I won’t run my business through intermediaries of their choosing and that they have been unsuccessful in suborning my lawyer and his clerks still infuriates them. I raised Ionn’s salary again, by the way.”
Heral laughed. “So what did you tell Jowell to threaten him off this time?”
“The same speech I always give,” Rothaide said nonchalantly. “I won’t hand over the titles to any of my ships, even the rowboats, or lessen any of my day-to-day duties in maintaining my fleet. I still decide which partners join my convoys and where they sail, I hold the finances, and last of all they must graciously accept that any heirs I deliver of my body will likely your bastard.”
That last stipulant forced Heral to stumble against Rothaide, and he wheezed against her shoulder, coughing and sputtering against the thin linen draped over her neck. “Your what?”
“Oh, we are honest with each other, Harry. A blood test in priest’s registry book would prove the paternity, but families pretend or overlook otherwise for legal inheritances, and you’d be surprised at the suitors who accept the concept of a name-only marriage or heir for adequate wealth, or offer me pretty words that say they will.”
“Child, Ro? You never said-”
“Oh, seriously, Harry! Compose yourself; I am neither with child nor plan to be any time soon. Even if I am in my second decade to be considering it. But if I ever bear someone’s child, for all our fights and inconsistent history, you are my most frequent lover and the one I feel the greatest depth of emotions.”
“To be fair, that emotion is sometimes hatred, and the blame for that is on me.”
“Whereas the kindest emotion my formal suitors inspire in my breast is indifference.”
Heral ran his fingers over the damp patch he had left on Rothaide’s wimple, gently tugging the edge of her head-veil to hide it. “We never discussed children. Should we, Ro?”
“Is this the first time I’ve heard Heral, greensail of the Judoc, sound afraid in his life?” Rothaide said, her tone bright and cheerful, artificially so. “Stop fretting, Harry. I refuse to raise a child alone – I’m too busy for it and don’t have a maid and enough servants I’d trust to raise one right, and I know why you wouldn’t be able to claim me and a child if we had one, unless you left the greensails. Which you won’t, you can’t, and I won’t ask you do.”
“My brother and his family have a nice house in {} as the mayor’s legal clerk, and my younger and his wife have good standing with their guild. Either could afford to take in another child, especially after my nieces and nephews. Stars know Jack has been expecting me to dump a bastard off with his family for years.”
“Because your brothers are decent men with lovely wives and don’t deserve to have you as their brother.”
“And yet when I tell them that, they don’t believe me.”
“Harry, does anyone who knows and yet still loves you actually trust you?”
“You trust me every time your ships leave port.”
“I trust me with my property and fortunes. Somehow, I still trust you with my heart. What I don’t you with is to keep yourself safe and make sensible mature decisions.”
“That’s why I wear this stylish green cloak. And what we have Jan for.”
“Sun-in-Glory bless Jan for three lifetimes,” Rothaide prayed. Then pausing and smiling, she added, “And why your superiors assigned Gui to our fleet. He’s more obnoxious and foolhardy than you, a feat I thought impossible, and I’m still not sure what Rim hellhole they found him.”
“Ballytown.”
“That charter-city is nothing but a den of pirates, I should have known.”
“One of their night-watchmen, if you believe it. Captain of their local scrummage team, which is why he still has leather balls and those armguards in his personal quarters back in the guildhouse and teaches new recruits how to play.”
“Well, I wish he’d stop picking fights with every half-drunk stevedore and osberficating tax agent’s bullyboy he comes across, but he has to protective instincts of a flock dog, and I know he gets into fights so he’s the only getting punched instead of the people he cares about. So I won’t lodge a complaint with the Grandmasters about him.”
“The saints enshrine him for loyalty. He’ll be reborn as a star-wolf for sure.”
Greensails wip
Today y’all get instead of Silm fic it’s original fiction (sort of, it’s actually a bunch of DC characters in a AU fantasy setting) but I got bored and wanted to write out some of the background characters. that dumb rose story universe, older time period stuff where I detailed more of the setting and played with adapting comic characters and a few plot-lines aka that vague batfam wish-fulfillment plot. This is the Green Lanterns stuff, hidden under a few layers of medieval fantasy, and tying a loose end or two to the first Rohese plot stuff.
…
Rothaide inherited the ownership titles to two of her father’s fastest and most advanced ships, beautiful greensail-rigged river vessels with high-walled clinker-built hulls barely touched by barnacles, a pair of magnificent ships that could ply the harbor and safer of the coastal waters of the Navel of the World. The ships were a most unusual inheritance, and one of questionable legality – her legal right to them questioned only because the situation was unprecedented and the almost brand-new ships so undeniably valuable. Had the will stipulated that the ownership was for Rothaide’s dowry, or had not unequivocally given her authority in matters of captaincy, allocation of crew shares, and the imperial writ to hunt pirates and anyone declared a royal enemy -a lucrative enterprise if greensailed– no questions of the inheritance would have brought before a judge. With no actual legal prohibition and her father’s swishes so plainly written out along with signed witness statements from multiple lawyers, an envoy of the merchants’ guild association, the heads of various craft guilds from the shipyard and ropewalk, and the master of the greensail pilots and marines himself to vouch for her, Rothaide kept her ships.
It was the greensails that caused the greatest concern and their Grandmaster whose opinion tipped the ruling in her favor. Had she needed to, Rothaide would have forgone the greensails and rigged her ships only with ordinary cloth, allowing another vessel to take on the greensails contract and the pilot who used them. But Aubertin vouched for his former employer’s daughter, and thus the wizened old head of the greensail marines, Grandmaster Guarin, defended her inheritance titles in court. It would have been a hassle to work up a new contract with another ship owner in the free cities along the mouth of the Green River and to rig new vessels, if one could hope to find a pair of ships as swift and in excellent condition, to cover the same shipping lanes and territory up and down the coast that Rothaide’s contract provided. Anyways, the pilot assigned to replace Aubertin aboard the senior vessel was something of a childhood friend to Rothaide. As the guildmaster of the shipbuilders remarked in confidentially to Grandmaster Guarin, if everyone had done the sensible thing of betrothing Rothaide to Heral, as the comradery and attraction between the two of them was so readily apparent, then fewer questions would have been raised. A sharp reminder of the unavoidability of controversy and a scathing rebuke from the spokesman of the powerful merchant association silenced that train of suggestion. The greensails and their pilots were to be kept away from outright ownership of private vessels. Aubertin’s motives for inviting his ultimate superior including a fervent prayer that Grandmaster Guarin could impress onto Heral just how ill-advised it would be for him to enter any formal union with with Mistress Rothaide, no matter any current motives. Said conversation had been embarrassing and unfruitful – on Guarin’s end of things. The greensails were items of magic and forest-taint, powerful weapons and thus under the regulation and authority of the imperial bureaucracy- if given some autonomy by avoiding direct military control by having their leader internally elected as Grandmaster from their senior-most members rather than some army general or court favorite. Had Heral been married off to Rothaide, that would bring imperial scrutiny down on the greensails who enjoyed the semi-independence that such benign negligence of oversight had so far granted them. Their usefulness as the main force by which pirates were dealt with along the rivers and coastal waters of the central regions of the empire was a balancing act. As long as they kept the ships of the powerful merchant alliance safe and happy, that guild association lent the greensails protection and political clout, but seen as too closely intertwined and no longer impartial to all members of that guild or in danger of becoming too strong a rival replacement for the old river barons, such power and protection would be ripped from them, leaving the greensail pilots and marines marooned. And with their green-glass lanterns and the greensails woven with magic, the group was the most visible example of people using forest-taint related powers, even if the summoning magic was centered in the weft of their cloth and not visible on their flesh. Public favor towards anyone displaying forest-taint powers was at a low ebb, even in regions without widespread Pure Ones sympathies. On the Green River there were pockets of that heresy and stretches of banks unsafe for greensail marines to disembark. Like the priests, that their powers were both tied to external tools and so evidently beneficial for the safety of the general populace shielded the group from ostracism and persecution, yet if that public goodwill ceased, the greensails would be exterminated hand in hand with the priests, as it was in towns that the Pure Ones controlled. It was for this reason Grandmaster Guarin offered indefinite invitations to the senior clergyman of the port city of {} for weekly evening meals, and there was a longstanding careful threeway courtship dance between the marines, private merchants, and the upper ranks of the priesthood along the river and coast.
The morning after the judge’s verdict on the will was declared, Heral ambled up the docks to Rothaide’s ship with an unlit lantern cradled in one arm, then boarded the Judoc with a cocksure grin and hug his lantern from the ship’s stern. He carefully lit the lantern and closed the door, smiling at the light emitting through the panes of smooth jade green glass. Stamped at the bottom of the lantern brass was his full name, the emblem of the greensail marines, and a string of numbers that designed his personal record in the masterbook. Aubertin, holding his own extinguished lantern and looking forward to a necessary retirement, waved to Heral from the docks. On the Judoc’s sister-ship, Heral’s replacement was hanging his own lantern and lacing a pair of greensleeves over his well-muscled arms.
They came in sets, the sails and the smaller pieces of cloth – capes or detachable sleeves, sometimes a yard of cloth worn as a headscarf or sew into a hood and liripipe. The garments could be used without the greater greensails, but no pilot could control the yards of greencloth in a ship’s sail without first unleashing a smaller item first. The greencloth was worth more than ten times its equivalent in silk or finest velvet, far more precious than cloth-of-gold. Woven on special looms with an undyed thread as naturally green as freshly sprouted grass by individuals protected and hidden, the cloth was magic. When a marine willed so, the fabric unraveled into summoned shapes and forms -usually animals- who propelled or defended the ships and summoners they were attached to. One could not question the terror caused by beholding a man’s cloak unravel into the shape of a charging bull and gore his attackers on cabbage green horns. Pirates learned never to attack a ship flanked by green dolphins.
The creatures summoned by the solemn man that was replacing Heral as chief marine onboard the Sapphire Star were two long-bodied fish with sharp narrow beaks, like a cross between sea serpents and swordfish. When under attack or nearing dangerous shoals that could possible ground the ship, Jan would hold out his arms and evoke the greencloth. Starting from his wrists, the tubes of fabric would dissipate into a thick green mist until only a slim ribbon’s width remained high around his biceps. The smaller triangular sail would also dissolve off the second mast and yard to join the moss-textured cloud. Then the mist would congeal into twin serpentine shapes that undulated through the air, the summoned creatures twining through the riggings and empty crossbeam yard, then dipping into the waves and dancing along this ship’s wake like eldritch dolphins. They could lift the ship over hidden sandbars or smash through attacking vessels, and only fire harmed them. If he eschewed the extra mass of the lateen sail, the creatures were but otter-sized.
Years before boarding the Sapphire Star, Jan led a corp of sappers and fortification engineers for the army, but the veteran had been plucked from his current fortress and fees paid to the knight he technically served once it had been discovered that he could manipulate and summon constructs from the greensails. The council of former pilots and marines that governed the greensails found his military experience invaluable, his lack of naval experience unfortunate. Kenric suggested to Grandmaster Guarin the virtues of Jan’s new posting.
Heral knew he would work aboard a sailing vessel all his life. His father had been a ship’s captain for Rothaide’s father and had drowned when the ship foundered within sight of the harbor. No one had or could have blamed Heral’s father for the loss of crew and cargo, and Heral only gave his anger to chance and a fickle sea he could not hate and forced himself to not fear. He remembered gathering jetsam from the wreck on the beach, knowing without hope that his father’s corpse would not be found among the pieces of driftwood. Rothaide had been there, her skirts and apron pined up to keep out of the waves, her small hands coated with sand as she helped him search. There were pieces of broken planks Heral used as shelving in his personal quarters in the guildhall for the greensail marines, and in Rothaide’s office a bottle of unopened wine across from her window, the cloudy dark brown glass shining like amber when the light hit it. The night before Heral boarded the Judoc as her greensail pilot, he sat with Rothaide in that office and suggested opening that rescued bottle. Rothaide scoffed. “Bring me more decent wine, Harry. That stuff’s vinegar, and we won’t touch it.”
She also warned him not to interfere with the Judoc’s regular pilot, who would steer the ship whenever Heral was not actively using the powers of the greensail. Or to get into any fights with Judoc’s captain. Or deckhands. Or strand her brand-new ship. Rothaide had a list of warnings, which she slowly dictated as she progressed through her drinks.
Well after twilight and halfway through an extravagant consumption of alcohol and expensive candles, Rothaide shifted their conversation to a more sobering topic. “Can anything be done for Aubertin?”
Heral waited before answering. With no interruption to save him, and no inspiration from his silent and empty wine glass, he said, “For what I understand, what little has been said to me and that which I was not intended to hear,” and this admission brought a quick snort from Rothaide, “the malady they cannot treat, even the priests. They thought it best he return to his family, spend his last months with them. The pain no longer troubles him, except in the morning and evenings, but that respite will not last.”
“Months? That is all?” Rothaide leaned towards him, her hand reaching out to clasp his forearm in an intimate gesture. Had anyone walked in on the two of them, especially with a lack of chaperone and the latest of the hour, neither of their reputations would have remained intact.
Heral shrugged. “That is generous. No one admits it, but he may have only weeks. That is the true reason Grandmaster Guarin is here.”
“And here I thought all this fuss was over me,” she teased.
Her attempt to lift the heavy mood worked, for Heral smiled for her. “I know Aubertin only by reputation, and Guarin made it clear no one expects me to be a worthy replacement. He was the best.” Heral’s smile widened into that familiar cocksure grin. “So I’ll prove them wrong.”
Rothaide leaned back. “You are going to kill yourself trying. I’ve known you since you were a boy, Heral, and you have not matured, learned to follow orders, or regained a sense of self-preservation.”
“Whatever the stories you have heard from the marines, they are half lies.”
“Grandmaster Guarin contorts his eyebrows in pain whenever he speaks of you, and from what I understand, he is the only one on your council that somewhat approves of you.”
“The council is a bunch of old assholes.”
“So respectful, Harry. I see why they like Jan more.”
“He’s good. Dour, and no sealegs to speak of. A bit arrogant.”
That nearly tipped Rothaide out of her chair, she was laughing so hard. “Never,” she huffed between laughs, “criticize anyone for arrogance. You have no room to.”
“Of course I do. Expert here,” Heral said, pointing grandiosely to himself.
“You will obey me, Harry, and don’t treat me informally in front of the townspeople or my crews. I cannot hold their respect if they see one of my key employees treating me as if I was his dockside floozy.”
“I’d never!”
Rothaide cut off Heral’s affronted shout. “If we carry on as we did as children, or if we continue to meet unaccompanied like this, everyone will interpret it as the loosest of morals on both ours ends, and my social standings and more importantly my business will be ruined. Glory, Heral, you aren’t that naive. And I know exactly what Grandmaster Guarin pulled you aside to warn against. The merchant guide sneers at me for my age and unmarried status. I won’t allow anyone to give those bastards ammunition to use against me.”
“Want me to go punch them?” Heral grinned eagerly, “Point out the worst snobs; I’ll gladly sock them in the gut for you.”
"What you will do is address me as Mistress Rothaide and treat me exactly if I was some high-strung grey-bearded bourgeois merchant whose expensive property you are the chief convoy guard for. You are my employee, and my greensail.”
Brown eyes serious and warm, Heral asserted, “I am yours.”
Rothaide sighed, unable to reprimand the implied devotion when she could not lie to herself about the reciprocality of the affection.
I got out of the shower today and thought, let’s write down some of those thoughts about one of the main characters from the original fiction piece (which is actually the fantasy medieval AU of various Batman characters and arcs but hush). this stuff
…
Cecile surveyed her options and decided seduction was her best chance. Well, she had Tielo seduced, in that the young lordling a year her junior and many levels above her in social standings and wealth as make their circumstances unusual was infatuated with her, if his confessions of friendship and eagerness to kiss her were indications. Yet all that was so tenuous, and Cecile needed a modicum of surety. She needed security, which she could grab if she was Tielo’s mistress.
A lord’s mistress was not as respected as an inn-keeper’s wife, yet the pay allowance was better, while it lasted, and Tielo was young and un-betrothed. Some mistresses held that position for decades and could enjoy a standing in the upper society, if they were discreet yet pleasant company. Cecile made friends easily, and her education and wit kept Tielo interested and amused. She wasn’t afraid of the social circles of merchants and clerks and the lower nobility, and with some effort she thought she could lessen her accent. A town-kept mistress could have a house of her own, a hobby to garnish some money and to set aside for a full business if or when the paramour lost interest, and best of all there would be no wife to compete with. Cecile would not and could not aim for marriage, not even had she been the girl from before, back before her father had been arrested, back when Steffen was the mayor’s secretary and their family had been well-off and respectable, one of the more respectable in the town. But her father was a crook, and not as clever as he thought himself, and caught and sent away to penance labor. His years toiling to consecrate lands safe for people to farm and build upon would soon be over. But when he had been caught, their family lost any respectability, and Cecile’s mother grew terrified- of destroyed opportunities, of starvation, of Steffen returning from the hallowing fields even more cruel and controlling a man, having been so thoroughly ruined. So Annis of Brownhall sold the house and used the remaining coin to change her name and drag her daughter to the city where they could hide. Cecile wondered if they were hiding from her father or the past in general, for her mother dulled her senses and memories in alcohol and medicine bartered from the small hospital adjacent the neighborhood temple where Annis worked as nurse and sometimes charwoman when the priestesses could not be bothered. At first Cecile’s mother had tried to find a position for her daughter at the temple, and Cecile wondered if that was the option she should have chosen. It was her safety net, if Tielo tired of her, better than the bawdy house down the street from the inn where her mother and her rented a small room and Cecile worked as barmaid. She could hear the rowdy crowd from her third-story room and see the brightly-garbed prostitutes with their customers if she leaned out the window. After nine years, she knew many of the older woman by name, those that were still plying the trade, for many came to the hospital for healing from bruises and illnesses and herbs to lessen the chance of child. Another benefit of becoming a mistress to a nobleman, that a pregnancy would secure her chances instead of ruining her. A child registered as all children were supposed to be in the vital book of citizenry by the local temples and whose massive master-copies were stored in the most secure vaults of Primarch’s Temple would have both parents confirmed by the drop of blood, and once recorded, no nobleman could deny their bastard. Ten days after birth, if not sooner, the fingerprint of blood was marked on the register page with all names recorded. Cecile had her name and tiny drop of blood somewhere in the pages of a book in Brownhall, for her mother did not have enough coin to pay a forger to erase it or the words written by priestly magic the confirmed her as the daughter of Steffen and Annis. Cecile was too old now for most of the legal claims her father could bind to her, if he found them again, but without a protector that would mean little. False records to get to Lutet where no one would recognize the wife and daughter of the clerk caught embezzling funds from the town coffers or look closely into their background would only hold under scrutiny of the small temples. Tielo remained ignorant of all the details of Cecile’s past; he knew she and her mother were hiding from her father and that he was not an honest man. But a mistress whose father was a thief was one who could never rise to more than casual dalliance, no better than the barters at the bawdy house, especially one who scammed respectable men of consequence out of imperial funds. Better had Steffen been a common murderer, especially when Tielo held a position of some importance in the Imperial bureaucracy and had just become the squire for Lord Rupercht himself.
Cecile wasn’t the greatest of beauties, but her features were regular and fair, her teeth good, her skin exoticly pale and hair as yellow as Lord Oliver’s famous wife and daughters. Her singing voice was nothing to praise, but the older and kinder of the prostitutes assured Cecile that if she needed to, she could go to the brothels at the best portions of town and find admittance and training. That was a flattering compliment, but even the madam of the bawdy house told her to aim for mistress of the awkward but sweet lord she had snagged. Cecile was educated, from before when they lived in Brownhall and she had been one of the small town’s few students, and then at the temple school. She could read swift and silent and remember most facts, could recite almost as many holy words as a priestess in the first year of training, and could calculate finances. That last skill gave her access to the inn’s accounting book, where the owner trusted her and preferred she be instead of waiting tables. Too pretty and too strikingly blonde to hide in the kitchens, but most days Cecile did not have to worry about drunk men trying to pinch or fondle her.
Tielo’s family was not related to one of the elector-princes and the material wealth if tallied would not rank in the top five of this province of the Empire, though of the area surrounding the imperial capital of Lutet, it did rank high, and of its land holding most were adjacent to Rosewings. In the other imperial city, the winter capital of Juriansfort, Tielo’s family would be middle-rank. He was an only son, for it was doubtful his father would sire any children with his second wife due to the crippling injuries received during the kidnapping attempt that killed the first wife. Said father stayed at one of the other manor-houses, writing letters infrequently to his son employed up at the Imperial Palace, requesting court gossip as to not fall behind and urging his son to advance their standings, and sending a hefty monthly stipend that would not dry up if Tielo did take a mistress. She had asked. At sixteen, he was a tad young, but as long as Cecile did not press him for extravagant gifts, she could be seen as a maturing influence. If nothing else, it would normalize Tielo among his peers, which was among his father’s concerns. Well, Cecile had known from their first meeting that Tielo was unusual.
Tielo’s words for his parents bespoke a faint fondness borne as much from obligations and expectations as affection. Raised almost exclusively by absent servants in the city manor while his parents toured through their various properties and attended the court, the only time they interacted with their son was when the emperor spent his summers in Lutet. He spoke of them as strangers, which Cecile assumed was normal for his class, yet the coldness of Tielo’s account and the way he flinched in surprise at her touch made her wonder.
She truly liked Tielo. She would not, could not love him. Her mother had loved her father, and misery followed.
If Cecile became Tielo’s mistress, she would have to meet his father and stepmother. She could have money to move her mother out of the third-story room of this narrow inn, away from the narrow streets of the barely respectable neighborhood of Lutet and into the quieter and safer quarter. At least they didn’t live near Rookery Row. The whores who Cecile helped to count their finances and hold their savings -that she was considered the most honest and trustworthy purse-holder on her street was her private glory and defiance to her father- whispered horror stories about the Rookery, that slum street where the Pure Ones Riot occurred almost twenty years ago
It was settled. The next time Tielo came, his leather folder stuffed with papers for Lord Rupercht and the Imperial Offices, Cecile would ask him.
at least the now predictable side effect of reading a Sanderson series (having recently finished all the Mistborn novels in May) is the desire to organize the magic system a little bit more in Rose Red. As that world is still in nebulae instead of star, and getting more and more stuff tossed in all the time – plus that desire to make the setting closer to a Western Hemisphere versus ‘Old World’, even if it’s original goal was ‘standard medieval fantasy AU setting for characters/tidbits’ (which includes the temptation to go paleolithic critters to justify horses and some other domesticated animal fore-bearers).
What I really should do is write out the plot summaries/skeletons before I forget and to give myself more concrete scaffolding – even if so much of the skeleton should be labeled ‘fossil’ for how long it’s been mentally marinading and how partial it is.
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