The final big blob of words
And a new project, one I plan to continue soon. Detailing the story of Swordspoint's Alec between Swordspoint and Privilege. Again, posted to _Riverside.
The official representative of the House of Tremontaine, along with the lawyer and the secretary it had been deemed necessary to send also, and their half-a-dozen guards, stood at a quarter past two in the morning in a room that was once the music chamber of a fine Riverside mansion. They were staring in silence through a doorway into what had been roughly furnished as a bedroom.
It was very cold, close enough to Last Night. The guards were breathing heavily, and steam was rising in delicate clouds around their heads. The bed they were looking at, large and ornately carved from some dark wood, was piled with several blankets and what appeared to be every item of clothing owned by its inhabitants. They were barely visible within their messy nest; only two heads of hair, one light brown, and one dark, were apparent.
A cat that none of them had noticed hopped down from a very rickety chaise longue behind them. It picked its way serenely through the legs of the group to leap onto the foot of the bed, where it stood, staring at them.
“Yes,” said the official representative of the House of Tremontaine after a sharp, self-conscious moment, “Well, indeed. Ah - so?” He looked at the lawyer, the secretary and the half-a-dozen guards, who either glanced down at their feet or nodded at him, conveying that since he had volunteered, they would let him handle the proceedings.
“Indeed,” he mumbled, and stepped out of the cluster to rap on the open door. Neither of the heads moved. He didn’t notice this, for convenience’s sake, and proceeded to produce from the pocket of his very grand coat a scroll from which he read in the true style of a Hill spokesperson.
“As the official representative of the House of Tremontaine, it is my sad duty to inform you that a few hours ago the Lady Diane Rosamond Perry Tielman, Duchess of Tremontaine, passed away. In her last will and testament Lord David Alexander Tielman Campion is recorded as heir to her title, to be inherited immediately. On behalf of the Council of Lords, the board of Governors of the People’s Glorious Rising Crescent University, the Tremontaine Northern Culture Charity, and the workers and servants of Tremontaine, I offer you my best wishes for your new position, Lord David, Duke Tremontaine.”
He had tried to make the ending triumphant, but instead it sounded like a question. The closest it got to an answer was the cat, which blinked and then stalked up the length of the bed to lie near the two heads. One of the guards sneezed. The representative bit his lip. He knocked on the bedroom door again, more loudly. He took a step into the room, then took it back again. He positively hammered on the door.
“Goodness me!” said a rough female voice from a way off. They heard footfalls on the stairs, and then a woman wearing a shabby coat over a very revealing nightdress appeared in the doorway. “Are you trying to destroy my rooms?” she demanded. “No? Then why in hell have you been banging on the walls for the last ten minutes? You should be glad I let you in in the middle of the bleeding night, not go making sure I don’t get any sleep in what’s left of it!”
“I beg your forgiveness, Madame. I am the-”
“The official whatever of the House of Whichever, yes, I know. You never told me what you’re doing here, other than annoying the landlady.”
“I am delivering a message to Lord David,” the official whatever replied nervously. “I did not mean to wake you, madame, I wished only - well, to wake him.”
Marie cast her eyes to the ceiling as if in a bid for patience. With another mutter of, “Goodness me!” she marched over to the bed, and shoved the blankets back. Two young men were sleeping with their arms around each other and their faces an inch apart. They pressed even closer together in the sudden cold, but their groans of protest were drowned out by Marie.
“Richard! Alec! Get up! There’s half the Hill here to see you, God knows what for though they say it’s important, but I want them gone this side of fifteen minutes. Get up!” And pausing only to give the assembled men a glare which said quite clearly, “That is how to wake people up, you idiots,” she stomped out of the room and back down the stairs.
The light-haired man raised himself up onto his elbows. He was impressively muscled and remarkably composed for someone who had just been awoken in the middle of the night to find a collection of strangers hovering outside his door. He was, in fact, watching those strangers as if expecting something of them. The representative looked at him and found that he thought this man could perhaps make a very satisfactory Duke, even if he had run away to Riverside, of all places. The same could not be said for his plebeian companion, who looked decidedly underfed and determined not to wake up.
Lord David leaned out of the bed to light two candle stumps on a side table. Shadows jumped up around the room, and his friend’s hair glowed bronze. He sat back into his pillows and looked questioning.
The official representative of the House of Tremontaine started once again to read out his scroll. Lord David watched him and did not shift; his companion rolled over and opened his eyes, if only to stare at the ceiling with a perfectly blank expression, his hair half-long hair spread out over the pillow.
A pregnant pause followed the end of the proclamation.
“My lord,” the secretary ventured, “we have carriages ready to take you back up to the Hill.” The new Duke of Tremontaine looked down at the young man next to him, as if to find an answer there.
“Of course,” he said quietly, and the representative stopped breathing. The ragged boy spoke like anyone plucked from the Duchess Tremontaine’ last winter ball. “Of course she had to die at midnight. How dramatic. How inconvenient.” He sat up abruptly, and looked at the calm man next to him. “Well, Richard? Shall we go? When was the last time you had a ride in a carriage? God only knows how they got it through the streets. Don’t you know these are the peak hours of business in Riverside?” This last was addressed with a smirk at the collection of Tremontaine aides, who were to a man staring at him with expressions far from suitably reverential. The skinny, naked boy, gathered his limbs together and started hunting through the clothing on the bed. He pulled what looked like a thin black blanket toward him, and found armholes somewhere to turn it into a loose robe - a scholar’s robe, the official representative realised. The most powerful man in the City was in Riverside and a scholar’s robe and nothing else.
He tossed a bundle of brown garments at the other man and watched him dress quite openly before turning to his entourage, none of whom had either moved or managed to change their expression.
“Yes?” he drawled. The entourage hurried to agree. The boy looked at them like they were perfectly stupid. “Well?” he asked, “I thought my presence was required on the Hill, hence your presence being required in my bedroom. Or is it simply the fashion to pay social calls in the middle of the night?” The party glanced down as one, and the new Duke sighed, eyebrows raised. “To the carriages, then,” he said, and the aides backed out of the doorway, filing to either side to create a corridor for the Duke to pass through. He promptly made a show of slouching to one side of the room, waiting
for his companion to precede him. The man slid out of bed.
A sword was in his right hand, which until that moment had been under the blankets. It was very plain and heavily crafted, tended so that the metal looked molten in the candlelight. He held it as easily and as precisely as he might a pen. Once again, the party from the Hill stared; once again, the official representative stepped forth reluctantly.
“My lord, may I ask who this is?” He tried to look at the man in question, who was as impassive as ever, rather than the weapon. “I ask, that is, if he is to accompany us, for reasons of security…”
“You may indeed,” said the Duke, standing up rather taller. “This is Richard St. Vier, and he is certainly going to accompany us.”