[Wild Roses] Trickwood Unification
Title: gestures
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Baroness Two Rivers and company
Prompt: 20F: "breeze"
Word Count: 2026
Notes: Dovetails with the spider's den
---------
Seachnall had expected her little toy to completely upset the meeting. Sidonie knew this like she knew the exact yardage of the Baiji's mainsail, and that if she leaned back into the embrace of this winter-fucked chair she'd tangle her hair inextricably with the mountains carved into the upper reaches.
She was also fairly sure her caution of the chair was making her look nervous in front of her rivals, which was doing nothing for her temper. Most of them had slouched back comfortably into their chairs when they'd sat down, though everyone but Seven Mills had sat up when Seachnall pulled out her distraction.
"Well," Sidonie remarked into the slightly stunned silence, "that explains Lucan's traffic problem."
She forced herself to smile when three of her companions' heads turned towards her for speaking out of turn. Black Rocks and --Vellamo? she thought, she'd never so much as seen a message with the man's crest before--were performing some sort of complicated silent negotiation for which of them got to play with Seachnall's toy next, but Seachnall, between them, was glaring at Sidonie.
"How'd your man talk a trader out of that thing?" she inquired, aping ease to accompany her genuine curiousity. She would have had to extract anything even remotely similarly intricate as a passage tithe, and that after searching a trader's boat thoroughly for interesting things.
"My new recruits circulate in the harbour, looking for interesting things," Seachnall told her, and Nölke Falcons' Ridge made a noise of sudden understanding. It took Sidonie a moment longer to realise that what Seachnall meant was that her people pretended to be mere citizens of her district to the traders until their faces became memorable.
Tricky. She'd have to see if she could arrange something similar. Tapping the nails of her right hand delicately on the surface of the map table, she nodded thanks to her fellow baroness--who like Vellamo she'd never met, but Mireille Seachnall had a reputation--and redirected her gaze to Black Rocks, who'd won the negotiation.
He'd flipped the toy over a few times, exposing carving on the underside to accompany the seal design on the front, and had tried activating it against his curled-in fingers before he'd set it back on the map. "It's good work," he remarked for the benefit of them all, "I'd almost assume it was commissioned in one of the cities if it wasn't so specific."
"It still might be," Seven Mills pointed out, finally sitting up and making a lazy grab for the toy, which Black Rocks blocked absently. "Given an accurate map, there's no reason for a hired-mage not to make something like this."
" . . How much did the trader ask for it?" Nölke Falcons' Ridge asked Seachnall as Black Rocks passed the toy off to Vellamo by sliding a map across Seachnall's space.
"If he could afford that dye brick and this with what he had in his pockets, not nearly enough for it to be hired-mage work," Vellamo said, cutting across Seachnall's drawn breath. Sidonie was a little impressed he didn't drop stone dead from the basilisk glare Seachnall shot him.
"Evan's correct," Seachnall told Nölke Falcons' Ridge as she stole the toy back from Vellamo with a snapping motion of one hand that reminded Sidonie uncomfortably of striking snakes. "This isn't hired-mage work. My man claimed to have a cousin who was thinking of making a run down through Lucan's territory, and the trader gave this away for the work gloves my man had in his rucksack."
Everyone paused, again.
"... Please tell me they were at least good work gloves," Black Rocks said after a moment.
"Dyed manticore leather," Seachnall replied, in the dismissive tone that said this was the standard for work gloves, hardly worth mentioning.
"That's . . disturbing," Black Rocks murmured, frowning absently down at the map in front of him.
"'s one word for it," Seven Mills agreed, slouching back into his chair, one hand idly stroking the lion's head carved on the end of the arm, "Might be there are a lot of these things floating around, and m'lady Mireille--" inclining his head in good-humoured-politeness "--was the first of us to get one, could be that trader's no intention of going back Lucan's way and figured he'd offload it, or--" he trailed off, letting all their imaginations sketch for them.
"May I see?" Sidonie asked into the silence, directing her comment to Seachnall. The men to either side of the other women kept talking past her, which might put her in the frame of mood--yes. Seachnall blinked at Sidonie, then quirked her mouth in a sour-toned smile and tossed the chip of wood at Sidonie.
As she caught it, she saw Black Rocks pass one of the maps down the line of barons at his right. Nölke Falcons' Ridge dipped his head in a tiny nod as he passed her the sheet, which she returned, feeling one of the ribbons in her hair whisper past her ear as she did. The map was manticore vellum, unless she missed her guess; even scraped so fine as this it didn't really feel like the aurochs and river dolphin hides her own maps were constructed from. If Black Rocks had local manticores she'd never heard it. Maybe he traded with Gellandi, or Lucan Ilmatar, or even Nölke Falcons' Ridge himself for the material?
The toy performed identically in her hand as it had for Seachnall and Black Rocks, and she tapped her free hand's index nail against the surface of the map table again, considering. Glancing up, she caught Black Rocks' eye, smiled briefly at the annoyed look that crossed his face as Seven Mills shot an experimental verbal volley past Seachnall's bows.
"Might I beg the use of a sheet and some ink?" she asked, timing her words to hit the spaces between Seven Mills and Seachnall talking past Black Rocks, and he nodded, pulling a pot of ink and a stylus--winter-cursed things, she much preferred the imported pens that carried their own ink--and inching a blank sheet of thinner vellum out from underneath the stack of maps in front of him.
It was Vellamo who reached over and snagged the materials, sneaking beneath Seachnall's upraised hands, passed them down to her with an abbreviated but genuine smile as she dipped her head in thanks.
The first strokes were both test of the stylus and the vellum, then, more confident, she sketched the first of Lucan Ilmatar's rivers. As she worked, she tuned out most of the conversation, only pausing to check in every so often when there was a lull in the noise.
Seven Mills caught her eye in one of the pauses, grinned and nodded. She grinned back, one pirate to another--any captain worth the title could accurately copy a chart, but it was nice to be acknowledged--then laid the old map partially over the dry portion of her copy, pressed her left thumb into the seal to show the pretty golden paths that would earn her a favour-owed from Lucan Ilmatar.
It was almost an hour later when the meeting broke up for the day. Black Rocks had called in drinks not long after she'd finished with the map, and she'd opted for one of the delicate green glass goblets etched with ice crystals instead of the heavier red wine she'd taken outside. She'd been surprised to find the glass filled with sweet, mineral-edged mountain water with a film of ice over the surface, especially when the ice re-formed every time she broke it, even when she held the bowl of the glass cradled in her palm. Mage's work, then, just another way for Black Rocks to show his family's history of laying hands on beautiful things.
She collected Jacoby and her gunbelt--empty of gun for courtesy's sake in Black Rocks' keep--in the ante-chamber of Black Rocks' council room. Jacoby, stone faced as he always was among possible other spies, held the rolled-up map for her while she coaxed the long steel spikes she'd removed from her hair when she'd entered the room back into their accustomed places. Peeking from the corners of her eyes, she saw Nölke Falcons' Ridge disappear several knifes into his clothes, and something steely slither up Seachnall's sleeve. Seven Mills hadn't bothered retrieving anything from his own entourage before he'd wandered off down the hall, apparently in search of Black Rocks' wine cellar.
She couldn't see Vellamo or Black Rocks without turning her head too far for stealth, so only retrieved the map from Jacoby and took her leave of the barons.
They didn't stop for directions, though Jacoby glanced down every cross-corridor they passed with a professional eye. Sidonie didn't call him on it; she was doing the same, after all.
Black Rocks had installed her in a northern suite, with stairs connecting her to her entourage's quarters. She waved a hand towards the stairs as they entered, and Jacoby disappeared down them without a word spoken. He'd be back later to compare notes, or she'd rustle him up for the same.
They'd both have to go through everyone's pockets before they took their leave in two days, though. She had no intention of receiving a politely worded note from so-cultured Baron Temir Black Rocks about the return of his silverware and decorative trinkets.
Propping open the heavy, leaded window in her suite, she grimaced, the exposed skin of her neck and arms tightening uncomfortably. They'd left Two Rivers with the ease of a late summer wind, and in Black Rocks even the breeze felt cold. She couldn't imagine living here, surrounded by grey and cool blue and heavy tapestries and blankets touched by pale spring-leaf greens. Everything she owned--except perhaps the buff and brown she faced the brighter tones with--clashed with her surroundings.
It made finding her paper-carrier faster than at home, to be fair. Brass hinges and walnut wood and creamy silk wrapping the handle, lying on top of the grey leather covered writing desk in her study.
She amended the map in a few places with one of her own pens, made a second copy in miniature for her own reference, then folded the sheet up neatly and began an accompanying note to her esteemed colleague Lord Lucan, Baron Ilmatar. The wolfson asshole who'd half-seriously accused her of choking off the trader traffic headed his way for no reason.
If she had resources for it in the coming summer, perhaps she'd go a'pirating in his waters, just for that. Baron Black Rocks would have looked for a reason for her to pick a fight, in Ilmatar's boots. He might still have asked, but he'd have looked first, and for all she was trying to hide her worry about whoever'd just taken Riverbirch coming upriver to find her, he'd have spotted it.
She alternately admired and despised Black Rocks for that. She never felt more out of her depth than when she was interacting with the other Barons, and inevitably her nearest neighbours upriver were him and winter-fucked Gellandi, who'd apparently liked the old spider who'd held Two Rivers before her.
Not enough to come help the man, but enough to throw a volley her way every time he could.
Gritting her teeth, she consciously relaxed her grip as she changed pens to the gold ink-pot and steel-nibbed dip pen formed from a dolphin's bone, adding a few delicate flourishes below the signature line and above the header before she signed her name and title, just to keep up the standard of lordly correspondence. Once it dried, she bundled map and letter up in an oiled-paper envelope, addressed it to Baron Ilmatar by way of Black Rocks, and sent it on its way.
In her own keep, she'd have walked it down to the water-post office in the harbour, but here that looked . . paranoid, especially given the punishments meted out to servants who spied on the mail. So she gave it over to a pretty child in Black Rocks livery, closed the door behind him and set to pacing her study, waiting for Jacoby to skulk back in.
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Baroness Two Rivers and company
Prompt: 20F: "breeze"
Word Count: 2026
Notes: Dovetails with the spider's den
---------
Seachnall had expected her little toy to completely upset the meeting. Sidonie knew this like she knew the exact yardage of the Baiji's mainsail, and that if she leaned back into the embrace of this winter-fucked chair she'd tangle her hair inextricably with the mountains carved into the upper reaches.
She was also fairly sure her caution of the chair was making her look nervous in front of her rivals, which was doing nothing for her temper. Most of them had slouched back comfortably into their chairs when they'd sat down, though everyone but Seven Mills had sat up when Seachnall pulled out her distraction.
"Well," Sidonie remarked into the slightly stunned silence, "that explains Lucan's traffic problem."
She forced herself to smile when three of her companions' heads turned towards her for speaking out of turn. Black Rocks and --Vellamo? she thought, she'd never so much as seen a message with the man's crest before--were performing some sort of complicated silent negotiation for which of them got to play with Seachnall's toy next, but Seachnall, between them, was glaring at Sidonie.
"How'd your man talk a trader out of that thing?" she inquired, aping ease to accompany her genuine curiousity. She would have had to extract anything even remotely similarly intricate as a passage tithe, and that after searching a trader's boat thoroughly for interesting things.
"My new recruits circulate in the harbour, looking for interesting things," Seachnall told her, and Nölke Falcons' Ridge made a noise of sudden understanding. It took Sidonie a moment longer to realise that what Seachnall meant was that her people pretended to be mere citizens of her district to the traders until their faces became memorable.
Tricky. She'd have to see if she could arrange something similar. Tapping the nails of her right hand delicately on the surface of the map table, she nodded thanks to her fellow baroness--who like Vellamo she'd never met, but Mireille Seachnall had a reputation--and redirected her gaze to Black Rocks, who'd won the negotiation.
He'd flipped the toy over a few times, exposing carving on the underside to accompany the seal design on the front, and had tried activating it against his curled-in fingers before he'd set it back on the map. "It's good work," he remarked for the benefit of them all, "I'd almost assume it was commissioned in one of the cities if it wasn't so specific."
"It still might be," Seven Mills pointed out, finally sitting up and making a lazy grab for the toy, which Black Rocks blocked absently. "Given an accurate map, there's no reason for a hired-mage not to make something like this."
" . . How much did the trader ask for it?" Nölke Falcons' Ridge asked Seachnall as Black Rocks passed the toy off to Vellamo by sliding a map across Seachnall's space.
"If he could afford that dye brick and this with what he had in his pockets, not nearly enough for it to be hired-mage work," Vellamo said, cutting across Seachnall's drawn breath. Sidonie was a little impressed he didn't drop stone dead from the basilisk glare Seachnall shot him.
"Evan's correct," Seachnall told Nölke Falcons' Ridge as she stole the toy back from Vellamo with a snapping motion of one hand that reminded Sidonie uncomfortably of striking snakes. "This isn't hired-mage work. My man claimed to have a cousin who was thinking of making a run down through Lucan's territory, and the trader gave this away for the work gloves my man had in his rucksack."
Everyone paused, again.
"... Please tell me they were at least good work gloves," Black Rocks said after a moment.
"Dyed manticore leather," Seachnall replied, in the dismissive tone that said this was the standard for work gloves, hardly worth mentioning.
"That's . . disturbing," Black Rocks murmured, frowning absently down at the map in front of him.
"'s one word for it," Seven Mills agreed, slouching back into his chair, one hand idly stroking the lion's head carved on the end of the arm, "Might be there are a lot of these things floating around, and m'lady Mireille--" inclining his head in good-humoured-politeness "--was the first of us to get one, could be that trader's no intention of going back Lucan's way and figured he'd offload it, or--" he trailed off, letting all their imaginations sketch for them.
"May I see?" Sidonie asked into the silence, directing her comment to Seachnall. The men to either side of the other women kept talking past her, which might put her in the frame of mood--yes. Seachnall blinked at Sidonie, then quirked her mouth in a sour-toned smile and tossed the chip of wood at Sidonie.
As she caught it, she saw Black Rocks pass one of the maps down the line of barons at his right. Nölke Falcons' Ridge dipped his head in a tiny nod as he passed her the sheet, which she returned, feeling one of the ribbons in her hair whisper past her ear as she did. The map was manticore vellum, unless she missed her guess; even scraped so fine as this it didn't really feel like the aurochs and river dolphin hides her own maps were constructed from. If Black Rocks had local manticores she'd never heard it. Maybe he traded with Gellandi, or Lucan Ilmatar, or even Nölke Falcons' Ridge himself for the material?
The toy performed identically in her hand as it had for Seachnall and Black Rocks, and she tapped her free hand's index nail against the surface of the map table again, considering. Glancing up, she caught Black Rocks' eye, smiled briefly at the annoyed look that crossed his face as Seven Mills shot an experimental verbal volley past Seachnall's bows.
"Might I beg the use of a sheet and some ink?" she asked, timing her words to hit the spaces between Seven Mills and Seachnall talking past Black Rocks, and he nodded, pulling a pot of ink and a stylus--winter-cursed things, she much preferred the imported pens that carried their own ink--and inching a blank sheet of thinner vellum out from underneath the stack of maps in front of him.
It was Vellamo who reached over and snagged the materials, sneaking beneath Seachnall's upraised hands, passed them down to her with an abbreviated but genuine smile as she dipped her head in thanks.
The first strokes were both test of the stylus and the vellum, then, more confident, she sketched the first of Lucan Ilmatar's rivers. As she worked, she tuned out most of the conversation, only pausing to check in every so often when there was a lull in the noise.
Seven Mills caught her eye in one of the pauses, grinned and nodded. She grinned back, one pirate to another--any captain worth the title could accurately copy a chart, but it was nice to be acknowledged--then laid the old map partially over the dry portion of her copy, pressed her left thumb into the seal to show the pretty golden paths that would earn her a favour-owed from Lucan Ilmatar.
It was almost an hour later when the meeting broke up for the day. Black Rocks had called in drinks not long after she'd finished with the map, and she'd opted for one of the delicate green glass goblets etched with ice crystals instead of the heavier red wine she'd taken outside. She'd been surprised to find the glass filled with sweet, mineral-edged mountain water with a film of ice over the surface, especially when the ice re-formed every time she broke it, even when she held the bowl of the glass cradled in her palm. Mage's work, then, just another way for Black Rocks to show his family's history of laying hands on beautiful things.
She collected Jacoby and her gunbelt--empty of gun for courtesy's sake in Black Rocks' keep--in the ante-chamber of Black Rocks' council room. Jacoby, stone faced as he always was among possible other spies, held the rolled-up map for her while she coaxed the long steel spikes she'd removed from her hair when she'd entered the room back into their accustomed places. Peeking from the corners of her eyes, she saw Nölke Falcons' Ridge disappear several knifes into his clothes, and something steely slither up Seachnall's sleeve. Seven Mills hadn't bothered retrieving anything from his own entourage before he'd wandered off down the hall, apparently in search of Black Rocks' wine cellar.
She couldn't see Vellamo or Black Rocks without turning her head too far for stealth, so only retrieved the map from Jacoby and took her leave of the barons.
They didn't stop for directions, though Jacoby glanced down every cross-corridor they passed with a professional eye. Sidonie didn't call him on it; she was doing the same, after all.
Black Rocks had installed her in a northern suite, with stairs connecting her to her entourage's quarters. She waved a hand towards the stairs as they entered, and Jacoby disappeared down them without a word spoken. He'd be back later to compare notes, or she'd rustle him up for the same.
They'd both have to go through everyone's pockets before they took their leave in two days, though. She had no intention of receiving a politely worded note from so-cultured Baron Temir Black Rocks about the return of his silverware and decorative trinkets.
Propping open the heavy, leaded window in her suite, she grimaced, the exposed skin of her neck and arms tightening uncomfortably. They'd left Two Rivers with the ease of a late summer wind, and in Black Rocks even the breeze felt cold. She couldn't imagine living here, surrounded by grey and cool blue and heavy tapestries and blankets touched by pale spring-leaf greens. Everything she owned--except perhaps the buff and brown she faced the brighter tones with--clashed with her surroundings.
It made finding her paper-carrier faster than at home, to be fair. Brass hinges and walnut wood and creamy silk wrapping the handle, lying on top of the grey leather covered writing desk in her study.
She amended the map in a few places with one of her own pens, made a second copy in miniature for her own reference, then folded the sheet up neatly and began an accompanying note to her esteemed colleague Lord Lucan, Baron Ilmatar. The wolfson asshole who'd half-seriously accused her of choking off the trader traffic headed his way for no reason.
If she had resources for it in the coming summer, perhaps she'd go a'pirating in his waters, just for that. Baron Black Rocks would have looked for a reason for her to pick a fight, in Ilmatar's boots. He might still have asked, but he'd have looked first, and for all she was trying to hide her worry about whoever'd just taken Riverbirch coming upriver to find her, he'd have spotted it.
She alternately admired and despised Black Rocks for that. She never felt more out of her depth than when she was interacting with the other Barons, and inevitably her nearest neighbours upriver were him and winter-fucked Gellandi, who'd apparently liked the old spider who'd held Two Rivers before her.
Not enough to come help the man, but enough to throw a volley her way every time he could.
Gritting her teeth, she consciously relaxed her grip as she changed pens to the gold ink-pot and steel-nibbed dip pen formed from a dolphin's bone, adding a few delicate flourishes below the signature line and above the header before she signed her name and title, just to keep up the standard of lordly correspondence. Once it dried, she bundled map and letter up in an oiled-paper envelope, addressed it to Baron Ilmatar by way of Black Rocks, and sent it on its way.
In her own keep, she'd have walked it down to the water-post office in the harbour, but here that looked . . paranoid, especially given the punishments meted out to servants who spied on the mail. So she gave it over to a pretty child in Black Rocks livery, closed the door behind him and set to pacing her study, waiting for Jacoby to skulk back in.