[Wild Roses] Trickwood Unification
Title: promises and plans
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Ruadhan, the baroness, Hernén
Prompt: 56B "silver"
Word Count: 725
Notes: This follows from box traps.
If you want more of this sequence, please ask.
The new guitar was slate-blue, silver-chased, lighter than other instruments he'd played, and seemed deeply determined to be a flattened fifth lower in its tuning than the one that'd died in the spring. He'd accepted the fifth but was not yet resigned to the flat, and entertained himself by arguing with it whenever he had a free moment. Which wasn't often--the baroness was a magpie and hid her hoard away in all the corners of her keep.
He pretended he didn't have tricks to see exactly where and what her stashes were, made a show of tapping mortared stones and wooden boards for hollow spaces. Two of her three options left her alive, for the time being, and he'd learned a long time ago that you never showed all the tricks in your sleeves. He used Ettore, too, let the wolf prowl as he liked through the keep and sniff out whatever caught his nose's attention.
The baroness looked like she desperately wanted to protest, especially when she kept finding Ettore standing just at the edge of her peripheral vision, showing his teeth.
"You undershot, last time," he told her, leaned back in her most comfortable armchair with the guitar in his arms, "missed us, and killed his son." Another few degrees and that cannonball might have hit Belladonna, and Winter help the baroness if it had. Hernén would have staked her out for the traders and the scavengers, at best.
He himself sympathised with Ettore, having for a moment imagined what it would have been like to lose either of his own sons to some idiot of a river pirate, but politics and the measured tones of his brother's voice in his head--Winter he hated that half the time his common sense spoke in Donel's timbre, not his own--demanded that he give this stupid magpie a chance, and a real one.
Trading boats were coming through the keep's harbour again, the bypass unnecessary for the moment. He made a show of distributing her hoarded wealth upriver through the traders, sent gifts to several werewolf packs--the trader who accepted them looked more than a little nervous when she found out where the packages were headed, but she didn't say no--and a small box of pomegranates, spelled against water and age, to his sister.
Arianhrod replied with a paper bird--he made a show of letting it perch on his hand before flicking it into its reading shape, and watched the baroness' eyes grow wide--that said 'bribes get you only what you deserve', but she'd included a coil of replacement metal guitar strings, sweet-spun silver wire in the body of the bird.
The baroness was not quite gloating, the fifth morning after he'd taken her guns from her, because she thought her small navy had held theirs off so long, given her time to plan a way around the options he'd given her. He didn't disabuse her of the notion directly, but the next boat that came through took all her gunpowder with it when it left, including the stash she'd hidden in hollowed-out stones in her staircase's walls.
It was a battered riverboat that brought Hernén to them, halfway through the day, accompanied by gusts of wind strong enough to nearly hold a man in place if he stood leaning into it. The baroness went too-easily to her knees on the dock, spoke an oath to his brother with her eyes low.
Every single trading boat that had come through this route knew a way of calling one of them. He'd given out his sister's name often enough that he suspected he'd need a second bribe, if anyone ever did call her, but she'd hear, no matter what stranger was calling her name. He and Fintain--who owed him a drink in any event--would be the ones nearby, at least until the summer ended, but it was Hernén who took the oath.
"If opportunity presents," he said softly in his brother's ear as he passed Hernén, "take Ettore with you, when she does."
Hernén nodded, even as he held out his hands and helped the baroness up in a show of welcome.
His brother had no sons, not yet, but he'd seen Ulysse, after storms, and Ettore's eyes after the cannonball hit. He'd do what he could, and that was all that could be asked.
'Verse/characters: Trickwood Unification; Ruadhan, the baroness, Hernén
Prompt: 56B "silver"
Word Count: 725
Notes: This follows from box traps.
If you want more of this sequence, please ask.
The new guitar was slate-blue, silver-chased, lighter than other instruments he'd played, and seemed deeply determined to be a flattened fifth lower in its tuning than the one that'd died in the spring. He'd accepted the fifth but was not yet resigned to the flat, and entertained himself by arguing with it whenever he had a free moment. Which wasn't often--the baroness was a magpie and hid her hoard away in all the corners of her keep.
He pretended he didn't have tricks to see exactly where and what her stashes were, made a show of tapping mortared stones and wooden boards for hollow spaces. Two of her three options left her alive, for the time being, and he'd learned a long time ago that you never showed all the tricks in your sleeves. He used Ettore, too, let the wolf prowl as he liked through the keep and sniff out whatever caught his nose's attention.
The baroness looked like she desperately wanted to protest, especially when she kept finding Ettore standing just at the edge of her peripheral vision, showing his teeth.
"You undershot, last time," he told her, leaned back in her most comfortable armchair with the guitar in his arms, "missed us, and killed his son." Another few degrees and that cannonball might have hit Belladonna, and Winter help the baroness if it had. Hernén would have staked her out for the traders and the scavengers, at best.
He himself sympathised with Ettore, having for a moment imagined what it would have been like to lose either of his own sons to some idiot of a river pirate, but politics and the measured tones of his brother's voice in his head--Winter he hated that half the time his common sense spoke in Donel's timbre, not his own--demanded that he give this stupid magpie a chance, and a real one.
Trading boats were coming through the keep's harbour again, the bypass unnecessary for the moment. He made a show of distributing her hoarded wealth upriver through the traders, sent gifts to several werewolf packs--the trader who accepted them looked more than a little nervous when she found out where the packages were headed, but she didn't say no--and a small box of pomegranates, spelled against water and age, to his sister.
Arianhrod replied with a paper bird--he made a show of letting it perch on his hand before flicking it into its reading shape, and watched the baroness' eyes grow wide--that said 'bribes get you only what you deserve', but she'd included a coil of replacement metal guitar strings, sweet-spun silver wire in the body of the bird.
The baroness was not quite gloating, the fifth morning after he'd taken her guns from her, because she thought her small navy had held theirs off so long, given her time to plan a way around the options he'd given her. He didn't disabuse her of the notion directly, but the next boat that came through took all her gunpowder with it when it left, including the stash she'd hidden in hollowed-out stones in her staircase's walls.
It was a battered riverboat that brought Hernén to them, halfway through the day, accompanied by gusts of wind strong enough to nearly hold a man in place if he stood leaning into it. The baroness went too-easily to her knees on the dock, spoke an oath to his brother with her eyes low.
Every single trading boat that had come through this route knew a way of calling one of them. He'd given out his sister's name often enough that he suspected he'd need a second bribe, if anyone ever did call her, but she'd hear, no matter what stranger was calling her name. He and Fintain--who owed him a drink in any event--would be the ones nearby, at least until the summer ended, but it was Hernén who took the oath.
"If opportunity presents," he said softly in his brother's ear as he passed Hernén, "take Ettore with you, when she does."
Hernén nodded, even as he held out his hands and helped the baroness up in a show of welcome.
His brother had no sons, not yet, but he'd seen Ulysse, after storms, and Ettore's eyes after the cannonball hit. He'd do what he could, and that was all that could be asked.