15.8
Gem shivered in her coat, the winters in the heart of the Valley of Man were strange, horribly damp, even as the season turned towards the longest night with snow clearly settling on all the cliffs and hills spread out around the Capital the mists of the rivers rose up in thick billowing dampness that sapped away the heat of the body.
Some strange deep heat from the earth seemed to keep them flowing even when they covered the stone and buildings around them in the delicate bristles and tines of hoar frost.
Gem could not imagine trying to live every year so close to the mists of those churning waterways. The way it gave winter’s teeth so much sharper a bite. Yet she saw the lights of their huddled spaces twinkling below and across, lining the crisscrossing arches of the cantoran constructions, carrying and separating rivers one over the other before finding a path into the depths below.
How had they built such things?
Multiple flows of water just as vast as the Vah flowed in bridges of water with stone her wyrm self could feel were centuries old by the count of days that touched them. Sorcery had been involved, but what about the water? How had they directed the rivers in the meantime? What exactly had been done here?
Did it have anything to do with the way the sky sunk so deeply into the tiered pit that was the Valley?
She pulled on the heat of her allotment of Wyrmflame, keeping back the chill of the mist. Making her breath steam, but it seemed like it took so much more to simply keep away the cold this winter than it ever had before.
The sound of footsteps announced some other poor soul daring the weather to join her, a glance over her shoulder showed it was the merchant Peter Bulchava, bundled up in a coat dyed the extravagant bright blue of noonday vault. As if he had wrapped himself in all the clear skies of the Valley and left gray winter clouds for the rest of them.
Gem pulled back on burning through quite so much of her Wyrmflame even if it made her shiver involuntary to do so, Havel’s reports about the man left her no doubt he was dangerous. But the twins were with her. Without even a glance she could guess that they had turned to consider him.
“It’s truly extraordinary what fools fate makes of us mortal men.”
He spoke without a tremble in his voice, undoubtedly ensorceled and swaddled in miracles as Jewel had seen he probably didn't even feel the touch of the cold. Gem took in a breath through her nose, sparing a wisp of flame to keep it from stinging her throat.
“What do you mean by that good merchant?”
She kept the tone befitting a Countess’ daughter speaking to a fellow guest of her Liege and host. Waiting to see just which mask would best be worn with this stranger, not committing to the child or another.
“That’s a tale long in the telling, but it begins with a long overdue apology to you and yours, to your mother of course, for an insult given. To her father as well, for when last I had dealings with the family of Rochford I was a... most ungracious youth.”
She turned to look up to the man, to the way that his face was lined deeply, hanging like loose cloth on his skull. Creased and cracked like poorly tended leather.
With none of the signs of age that his body should have given he knelt before her, even reached up and took off his ridiculously blue and black floppy hat. Revealing a head only covered with wisps of hair.
“For the mercy and lessons given to me by your family when I was but a shortsighted peddler thirty five years foolish. For the riches given to me by your family’s sorcerous cat I offer a humble thanks to you and your family. It is thanks to House Rochford that I’ve gained all the wealth and wonders of my Enterprise.”
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Gem stared at the man as he spoke, voice fervent words in a rush with exuberance as if it was of something of great import, what was he talking about?! Gem was fairly sure none of her selves had ever seen this man before in any of her lives. At minimum Gem certainly had never laid eyes on him before.
“I must apologize, but I do not recall my mother ever mentioning you Peter Bulchava.”
He looked up at her, and some of the light in his expression slid away, the wrinkles sunk, the smile drooped. With him knelt down to match his gaze with hers she could catch the confusion and then a brief anger twitching in the wrinkled flesh around his eyes. His gaze tracing over her face looking for a tell.
“Ah, I would guess she never mentioned such a shameful thing to you, well let me just say that in my youth I gave insult to your grandmother, and in your grandfather’s wisdom I was divested of a powerful and dangerous piece of magic that had done me evil.”
His tone was back into that almost reverent tone, much like some of the people in Kaeketeh spoke of her wyrm self in taverns and along the streets of Kaeketeh. Gem blinked, her memory feeling muddled echoes. It sounded familiar, but lost in her own memory.
“That certainly sounds like an act my grandfather would have done. He was a good man. But I cannot say I was ever told of such a thing by either of them.”
Peter Bulchava nodded to her words, then the man whose very scent and manner taunted her selves with vague hints of familiarity and now claimed to have had dealings with her family turned to visibly consider Eunika and then Jadwiga.
“It was a misunderstanding, a grave insult to your mother’s upbringing that I now see how it could not be more far from the truth, especially seeing what a child sired with wyrmish blood truly makes? For that I apologize, and promise you and your family this, House Rochford is owed by the Bulchavan Enterprise.”
Gem stiffened as he spoke, she could just barely see the shift in Eunika and Jadwiga, hear the sound of their bracelets on wrists moving to a better angle to draw swords. But still despite the brief flashes of anger he smelled honest.
Frail and vaguely rotting in much the same way as the High King did. But where Mathias suffered only temporary relief Peter Bulchava had been obviously fortified and sustained constantly by divine miracles. He was likely a very dangerous man if his thoughts turned to violence.
But all three of her were nearly full of wyrmflame, if he chose to strike at least one of them should be able to escape. Still he was a guest, same as her, and there was yet no sign of any malice in his eyes or scent.
“A fine thing if we have truly suffered both such an insult and given you a boon, perhaps best to present yourself to our mother though? So that such a pledge can be accepted properly?”
The man’s face stilled as she finished speaking, then he widened his smile, curdling wrinkles into deep crevices in his cheeks, folding at the corners of his eyes like cliffs over thin skin. The wretchedly aged face vanished behind the wrinkled and sunken hand as it pressed his wide floppy blue hat back upon the bare spotted skin of his skull.
He stood up, straight and proud and steady as a youth ready for a bout in the ring with her or the twins.
“Certainly lady Gem of Rochford! Nothing would please me more than to give word, bond and ink to vellum assuring what the Bulchavan Enterprise owes to the interests of your house! Our present and most lucrative client is of course the Pantheon of Old Cantor, but as a personal debt to you and yours I will spare no expense!”
He dipped back into another smooth, lithe bow in spite of the cold that stung Jewel’s face and forced her to burn wyrmflame to keep her joints from creaking.
“Have your mother call upon me and my scribes whenever she wishes to receive what my enterprise owes the House of Rochford!”
Then he was off, away and into the palace, his steps light, practically skipping with joy. Gem glanced up to either of her sister selves and found only agreement with her own confusion. Neither of them could fully place who this strange man was.
They would have to convene with their Wyrm self to try and recall properly.
That there was this much past entanglements with the Bulchavan Enterprise and Rochford was growing to a terrible itch in her head Gem was sure her sister selves shared.
Hopefully after this, when they were one the mystery would finally come undone.