{ reference } excerpts from a "courtship".
Baroness Melidere had retired early, pleading a painful headache. It was not that she found her duties as Ehlana's lady-inwaiting onerous, but rather that she had an important decision to make, and she knew that the longer she put it off, the more difficult it would be. To put it rather bluntly, the Baroness had reached the point where she was going to have to decide what she was going to do about Stragen.
We must candidly admit that Melidere was no innocent. Few members of any court really are. An innocent girl has only one option in her dealings with the opposite sex. A more worldly girl has two, and this was the crux of Melidere's dilemma. Stragen, of course, would make a perfectly acceptable paramour. He was presentable, interesting, and he had exquisite manners. Melidere's reputation at court would not be tarnished by a liaison with him; quite the reverse, actually. That had originally been her intention, and the time had come for her to take the final step and to invite him to her bedchamber and have done with it. The liaison could be brief, or it could be renewed each time Stragen visited Cimmura. That would give the affair a certain status, while at the same time leaving them both free to pursue other amusements, as was normal in such situations. Melidere, however, was not sure if that was all she wanted. More and more, of late, she had found herself thinking of a more permanent arrangement, and therein lay the dilemma. There is a rhythm, almost a tide, in the affairs of the heart. When that tide reaches its high point, a lady must give certain signals to her quarry. One set of signals points toward the bedchamber, the other, toward the altar. Melidere could no longer put it off. She had to decide which set of signal flags to hoist. Stragen intrigued her. There was a sense of dangerous excitement about him, and Melidere, a creature of the court, was attracted by that. It could be intoxicating, addictive, but she was not entirely sure that the excitement would not begin to pall as the years went by.
There was, moreover, the problem of Stragen himself. His irregular origins and lack of any official status had made him overly sensitive, and he continually imagined slights where none had been intended. He hovered around the edges of Ehlana's court like an uninvited guest at a banquet, always fearful that he might be summarily ejected. He had the outsider's awe of the nobility, seeming at times to view aristocrats almost as members of another species. Melidere knew that if she decided to marry him, she would have to attack that first. She personally knew that titles were a sham and that legitimacy could be purchased, but how was she going to persuade Stragen of that? She could easily buy him out of bastardy and into the aristocracy, but that would mean that she would have to reveal the secret she had kept locked in her heart since childhood. Melidere had always concealed the fact that she was one of the wealthiest people at court, largely because her fabulous wealth had not been legally obtained.
And there it was. She almost laughed when she realized how simple it was. If she really wanted to marry Stragen, all she'd have to do would be to share her secret with him. That would put them on equal footing and tear down the largely imaginary barrier.
Melidere was a baroness, but her title had not been in her family for very long. Her father, a man with huge shoulders and a mop of curly blond hair, had begun life as a blacksmith in Cardos, and he had amassed a fortune with a simple invention which he had crafted in his forge. Most people look upon gold COins as money - something with intrinsic and unalterable value. There are some, however, who realize that the value of a coin lies in the social agreement saying that it is worth what the words stamped on its face say that it's worth. The words do not change, even if the edge of the coin has been lightly brushed with a file or a sharp knife a few times. The tiny fragments of pure gold thus obtained do not amount to very much if one files or carves the edge of one coin. If one tampers with a thousand coins, however, that's quite another matter. Governments try to discourage the practice by milling the edges of coins during the stamping process. A milled coin has a series of indentations around its edge, and if the edge has been filed or carved, it is immediately apparent. Melidere's father had contrived a way to get around that. He had carefully crafted a set of re-milling dies, one die for each size coin. A blacksmith will not handle enough coins in his entire life to make enough to pay for the effort of hammering out such equipment. Melidere's father was a genius, however. He did not make the dies for his own use, nor did he sell them. Instead, he rented them, along with the services of highly trained operators, taking a small percentage as his fee.
Melidere smiled. She was positive that very few gold coins in the whole of Eosia were of true weight, and she also knew that five percent of the difference between face value and true value was stacked in ingots in the hidden vault in the basement of her own manor house near Cardos. Once she had made Stragen aware of the fact that she was a bigger and more successful thief than he was, the rest would be easy. His illusions about her nobility would fall away to be replaced with an almost reverential respect for her consummate dishonesty. She could even show him the source of her wealth, for she always carried the most prized memento of her childhood, her father's original dies. Even now, they nestled in velvet in the ornately carved rosewood case on her dressing table, polished steel jewels more valuable than diamonds.
Even as she realized that the means to marry Stragen were at hand, she also realized that she had already made her decision. She would marry him. She would, the very next time she saw him, hoist those signal flags rather than the others. Then she thought of something else. Her father's activities had been confined to the Eosian Continent. All of Tamuli was literally awash with virgin coins unviolated by file or knife-edge. Once he realized that, Stragen would not walk to the altar, he would run.
Melidere smiled and picked up her hairbrush. She hummed softly to herself as she brushed her long, honey-blonde hair. Like any good Elene girl, she had attacked the problem logically, and, as it almost always did, logic had won out. Logic was a friendly and comforting thing to have around, particularly if morality didn't interfere.
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'How long has this been going on?' Stragen asked in a slightly choked voice.
'Since I was a little girl,' Melidere replied. 'My father made the dies when I was about seven or so.'
'Do you realize what you've done, Baroness?'
'I thought we were going to drop the formality, Milord Stragen.' She smiled at him.
He ignored that. 'You've struck a direct blow at the economy of every kingdom in Eosia. This is monstrous.'
'Oh, do be serious, Stragen.'
'You've debased the coinage!'
'I haven't really, but why should it make any difference to you?'
'Because I'm a thief. You've devalued everything I've ever stolen!'
'No, not really. The value of the coins doesn't really have anything to do with their true weight. It's a matter of trust. People may not like their governments, but they trust them. If the government says that this coin is worth a half-crown, then that's what it's worth. Its value is based on an agreement, not on weight. If the coin has milled edges, it has the value that's stamped on its face. I haven't really stolen anything.'
'You're a criminal, Melidere!'
'How can I be a criminal if I haven't stolen anything?'
'What if they find out about what you've been doing?'
'What if they do? They can't do anything about it. If they say anything or try to do something to me, I'll just tell the whole story, and every government in Eosia will collapse because nobody will trust their coins any more.' She touched his cheek. 'You're such an innocent, Stragen. I think that's why I'm fond of you. You pretend to be depraved, but actually you're like a little boy.'
'Why did you tell me about this?'
'Because I need a partner. I can handle these affairs in Eosia, but taking on Tamuli as well might strain my resources just a bit. You have contacts here, and I don't. I'll teach you the business and then lease Tamuli to you. I'll buy you a title and set things up so that you can start immediately.'
His eyes narrowed. 'Why?' he demanded. 'Why are you being so generous?'
'I'm not being generous, Stragen. You will pay your rent every month. I can see to that. And you won't pay in coins. I want bullion, Stragen - nice, solid bars of gold that I can weigh - and don't try mixing any copper in, either. I'll have your throat cut if you ever try that.'
'You're the hardest woman I've ever known, Melidere.' He sounded slightly afraid of her.
'Only in some places, Stragen,' she replied archly. 'The rest of me is fairly soft. Oh, that reminds me. We'll be getting married.'
'We'll what?'
'Partnerships aren't made in heaven, Milord, marriages are. Marriage will give me one more hold on you, and I'd be an idiot to trust a man like you.'
'What if I don't want to get married?' He sounded a little desperate now.
'That's just too bad, Stragen, because, like it or not, you will marry me.'
'And you'll have me killed if I don't, I suppose.'
'Of course. I'm not going to let you run around loose with this information. You'll get used to the idea, Milord. I'm in a position to make you deliriously happy - and fabulously wealthy to boot. When have you ever had a better offer?'
The look in Stragen's eyes, however, was one of sheer panic.
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'There's nothing we can do about it right now,' Stragen told him. 'Let's see how Valash reacts to this story you cooked up. Keep it sort of vague until we see which way he jumps.'
'And then will you teach me how to pick a pocket?' Talen asked with overly-feigned enthusiasm.
'All right,' Stragen sighed. 'I apologize. I'll concede that you know what you're doing.'
'Oh, thank you, Vymer!' Talen gushed. 'Thank you, thank you!'
'You've been spending too much time with Princess Danae,' Stragen muttered sourly. 'I hope she does marry you. You deserve it.'
'Bite your tongue, Stragen. I can still run faster than she can.'
'Running doesn't always help, Reldin. I thought I could run, too, but Melidere cut my legs out from under me with a single word.'
'Oh? Which word was that?'
'Profit, my young friend. She waved unlimited amounts of gold in front of my face.'
'You sold out, Stragen,' Talen accused. 'You betrayed every bachelor in the world for money.'
'Wouldn't you have? We're not talking about a few farthings here.'
'It's the principle of the thing,' Talen replied loftily. 'I wouldn't sell out for money.'
'I don't think it'll be money that Danae's going to offer you, my innocent young friend. If you start running right now, you might escape, but I sort of doubt it. I knew your father, and there's a certain weakness in your family. Danae's going to get you, Talen. You don't have a chance.'
'Could we talk about something else? This is a very distressing sort of subject.'
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'Don't worry about him, From,' Stragen told Sparhawk. 'He can take care of himself.'
'I think we sometimes forget that he's only a boy, Vymer. He doesn't even shave regularly yet.'
'Reldin stopped being a boy before his voice started to change.' Stragen leaned back on his bed reflectively. 'Those of us in our particular line of work tend to lose our childhoods,' he said. 'It might have been nice to roll hoops and catch polliwogs, but...' He shrugged.
'What are you going to do when this is all over?' Sparhawk asked him. 'Assuming that we survive?'
'There's a certain lady of our acquaintance who proposed marriage to me a while back. It's part of a business arrangement that's very attractive. The notion of marriage never really appealed to me, but the business proposition's just too good to pass up.'
'There's more, too, isn't there?'
'Yes,' Stragen admitted. 'After what she did back in Matherion that night, I'm not about to let her get away from me. She's one of the coolest and most courageous people I've ever met.'
'Pretty, too.'
'You noticed.' Stragen sighed. 'I'm afraid I'm going to end up being at least semi-respectable, my friend.'
'Shocking.'
'Isn't it? First, though, there's this other little matter I want to deal with. I think I'll present my beloved with the head of a certain Astellian poet of our acquaintance. If I can find a good taxidermist, I may even have it stuffed and mounted for her.'
'It's the kind of wedding present every girl dreams of.'
'Maybe not every girl,' Stragen grinned, 'but I'm in love with a very special lady.'