14.4
Adelyne once again breathed a sigh of relief, whatever torpor had taken hold in her Countess since winter appeared to finally be over. The letters once again flowed, seasons long delays had ended and finally reports were being received, read and orders given in reply.
She had been worried that one of her agents, or even Adelyne herself might have to make the miserable trip to Valasect in the flooding seasons of spring to wrangle the oversized snake out of whatever lethargic mood she had found herself in.
How was a dragon that could wade through armies and strike terror into the hearts of the gods themselves also simultaneously the most delicate person Adelyne knew?!
More than a third of her best informers were orphans, losing your father was awful, but if she could have lived through it without even remembering it the pain couldn't be ‘that bad’. Even finding out she’d lost her maybe-not-even-grandfather had hurt, sure, left her bereaved certainly, but Adelyne didn't just up and stop doing her duties when it happened!
People died, you moved on, went back on the street and snatched that coin from a merchant or lesser noble so you could eat that evening! Moping around for over a season was how you ended up just as dead as those you mourned!
Pfah! Only the rich and the noble could afford to grieve for over sixty five days!
A night or two every once in a while crying your eyes out in private? Sobbing in an alley? Or more recently in her nice cozy office? That was fine!
But not for seasons!
Life had no mercy for those that let death stop them. Adelyne knew that, her hundred little orphan informants knew that, the laborers and apprentices in the guilds all knew that. Life killed those that let grief stop them.
At least it did for most people. Adelyne’s informers, watchers and the higher ranking members of her ‘guild’ very dutifully had been letting her know that there was apparently a heavy layer of the world that like fat off the top of a night chilled soup were apparently above such simple matters as actually having duties that required them to work for a living!
If only half of them were as dutiful with their ledgers as the Countess herself!
Okay, yes maybe Jewel deserved a bit of a rest after her hard fought war, like those hunting dogs that some of the nobles kept, maybe it was right for her to lounge and brood between her brief little forays into the world.
Perhaps that was even natural for dragons.
But Adelyne suspected it wasn't, and that Jewel, Shining Countess of Viznove, newly declared defender of the formerly Magarskan barony of Bledetan and Pyrenean was just being a spoiled child crying in her terrifyingly extravagant bathing room while the rest of Viznove (and Adelyne in particular) had to suffer through her unexpected absence!
Things which had been delayed for after the war had not, in fact, been picked up when the war ended, Paul bless that poor man had put in a sound effort to take up his wife’s slack, but the nobility and guildheads of Kaeketeh and Viznove overall were accustomed to the personal seal of their Countess and her critical eye on the ledgers of her dominion over them.
They expected her spawn’s ridiculously precise hand to be the one that wrote her orders and judgements to them.
They took offense and made quite a lot of trouble for Adelyne and her guild when they felt slighted by the penmanship of the mere ‘count consort’ or in the back rooms Adelyne had reports from ‘man-wife’ of Viznove.
So for the tenth time that morning as Adelyne caught up with correspondence that arrived the evening before she sighed in relief. The Countess had finally awoken from her grief and begun to set her house and land in order again. Simply having the finely honed attention of Jewel back upon the sums for the tithes and debts of the Vassals of Viznove was a relief.
All around today was shaping up to be a wonderful morning at her desk.
Oh, Oh no! Heavens above and the Countess in Valasect did Evelyne really just think that?!
She quickly shifted the awful paperwork that had found some way to send a thrill into her day looking for something that should actually be properly exciting! Her fingers alighted on a carefully bound scroll sealed with a black wax that tingled under her fingers. A little hitch in the mind, a feeling that made the lump of black easy to ignore, the shape of it hard to look at.
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Perfect!
Nothing standing out, shapeless to the unobservant. Crude and poorly made to the curious, but subtle and precise to the ones who knew it.
A single heavy letter pressed with a seal that appeared to be crude and badly made, but was in fact precise and distinct, with a textured grain to it that spoke of how every imperfection had been ordered and cast intentionally with just such marks.
More so as Adelyne muttered the spell of that insufferable cat and moved her fingers in the intricate little twisting patterns she felt the attention that had been placed into that seal.
Havel! What should be his first proper report since arriving in the Pantheon!
Adelyne’s finest student to the art that Fizzbunches had bestowed upon her. A more clever man or waif to the art of infiltration and subtlety she had not found yet among the guild. If it was politically possible the heir to her position as Headmistress of her strange sprawling guild of secret thieves and manipulators.
Alas, that could never openly be allowed. Stupid Wyrm and her declaration regarding Waifs! Even stupider nobles and rich idiots taking that decree even farther than the Countess had intended.
There was a reason that of the Waifs that remained in Kaeketeh; almost all of them worked for Adelyne now.
It wasn't safe for the Countess’ accursed anywhere else in the city.
The thick bundle was deceptive in its size; what appeared to just be a missive written on over-thin parchment from without was anything but! With the seal broken she found the incredibly fine skins within, so delicate as to be nearly see through in their almost gossamer quality. The ink upon them was barely visible and she knew from many a hard lesson learned how nearly impossible it was to scrawl ink into the stuff without damaging it.
But that was fine, it made the real purpose of the things further hidden. She gently shifted the pages of far to fine parchment, skin specially ordered to be stretched to the absolute limit, paid for extra despite the complaints of the workers how she was ordering ruined skins.
Focusing on the attention within them as only she could, flipping one over, shuffling another, feeling with her fingers as much as looking with her eyes, until finally she had three of the sheets set aside, then another three, and another.
What had been twenty meaningless expanses of parchment littered in scratches and scrawls of ink became seven pages, each only just legible if held in front of a lantern’s light or the sun on a clear day.
Adelyne licked a thumb and smeared her saliva along two edges of each of the far too thin sheets then pressed them closed just where she felt her apprentice’s focus had lain.
And then properly sorted and prepared she began to read her best secret thief’s report of his efforts to uncover just what was happening in the Pantheon, the hub of all the diviners and temple workers of the Realm of Cantor Reborn and beyond.
Carefully letting the words seep into her mind, feeling, groping at the edges of a sensation of what attention they echoed, what the machinations were looking for in that distant place. She’d bent and twisted the one spell Fizzbunches had given her so many ways Adelyne hardly felt it was even right to claim it was his at all.
It was only the fact she could barely teach even a fraction of what she could do with it to anyone else in the Guild that Adelyne could admit that maybe the blasted cat still had any claim to it at all.
Still she felt around at the conspiracy reported to her in Old Cantor, the insights, observations and figures given to her by her agent in that distant land. Then with a very different sigh from the contented relief she had been feeling all morning Adelyne, Guild Mistress of the Beggars, Orphans and Abandoned of Kaeketeh tasted meaning in the report from the ruins of Old Cantor.
What’s more she would bet gold to silver that she smelled sorcery and divine fuckery in equal measure coming off Havel’s report.
“Gitta! Inform the lordling he has until Hungry Summer to have the knack solid enough to impress me or he will not be going to the Capital at all.”
From a corner she had glanced at only once that morning a girl barely old enough to court a boy stepped into her vision.
“Yes Guildmistress!”
Then she stepped back out of sight and into silence, Adelyne glared for a time at the still closed door before sighing again with a pained exasperation. She knew from the records that Gitta was a year older than Adeleyne was when Jewel had claimed her as a bonded servant on the streets, yet somehow the lanky girl looked younger than some of the waifs!
In the moment of her carefully telegraphed distraction there was a shift, a click of a latch, and when Adelyne’s eyes were focused again she noted the once closed door had been left ajar.
Ah, at least the girl was still not ready to be considered a journeyman in the guild.
That would have made Adelyne feel like a withered old crone!