The fishing town of Red Scale welcomed us, and our coin. Warehouses opened themselves to us despite the setting sun, and provisions were procured. Captain Bodin immersed himself in the mundane business of logistics, while the free crew found refuge in the Loopy Lyre, where Aisha found herself performing a duet with the local bard. That man had a motley cloak like an Aillesterran bird, strutting about with a mandolin while she sang out the verses of The Wanderer.

I’ve been o’er rivers and streams,

I’ve seen both quarrels and dreams,

So won’t, my feet, please take, me home?

Stale bread crunched between Lucius’ fingers. He jabbed the lumps into a thin fish soup, sopping up the oils until the crust could be chewed. The head of the fish rolled up in his bowl to stare at him while he had cheeks puffed full. He stabbed it with his knife.

“Calm down,” Sammy said. “She’s just playing hard to get. It’s hardwired into her.”

He scowled and chopped his hand onto the table like it would help him form a point. He swallowed. “I’m getting mixed signals, alright? I swear like… three times! We’ve been almost in each other’s arms and then I look away and–”

“And you look away. What woman wants to be the second thing on their man’s mind? Of course she would turn away if you did that!”

“There was a sea monster!”

Sammy rolled his eyes.

I carry my quiver and spear,

But it’s my friends kept near,

So won’t, my feet, please take, me home?

Sammy sighed and put his chin in his hands as he watched the two bards entrance the room. “One more day, and we’ll be in the capital, right? I should find my master… well, my old master, now that I’ve met Amurabi.”

“Probably not a good idea, if Golden took your oath. You’ll be fumbling your words something awful.”

That screwed up Sammy’s face into a frown. “You might be right.”

“I think the wine is getting to me, because I’m wondering if I should just grab her and drag her to bed. I think she might go for it…”

“That’s a horrible idea. That’s like, as a bad an idea as trying to write her a lovesong or something.”

Lucius waved him off. “Obviously that’s a bad idea, she already knows the good ones. Damn shame Amurabi never taught me this stuff.”

That made the doctor squint his eyes at him. “From what I’ve heard, you had plenty of opportunities…”

“What? With those noble brats?”

“Well, there’s Ezra–”

“Out of the question.”

“Or that temple girl, Kajsa was her name?”

“That’s!... Opportunity missed maybe. I left the city, remember?”

Then he realized that Aisha’s singing had stopped. The other bard still plucked a few chords here and there, circling the crowd like a wolf looking for a new patron to request a song. They had been interrupted by a man slightly older than Lucius who wore a black tunic trimmed in gold thread. His hair, similarly black, swept down his back, held back by a silver circlet. Worst of all, he, a nobleman, was talking to Aisha.

Lucius almost knocked the bench over, Sammy with it, when he bolted upright. Washing his meal down with an ale to strengthen himself, he headed over. He heard them talking before he got there, weaving between the tables of sailors and locals as he had to. “Such a long journey,” he was saying, leaning close to her.

“An eventful one too. We saw whales,” Aisha said, crossing her legs as she sat on the table before him. She smiled.

“I know a few whale hunters. I know a thing or two about the beasts as well. Some are good eating, others… not so much, you might say. What did they look like?” the nobleman asked.

Aisha flicked her head to get some hair out of her face. “They were big and gray, and liked to squirt for attention.”

The nobleman paused, letting his mind chew on her words and tease out whether she was foreign to the language of Vassermark or if she was insinuating something. Lucius did not pause to think about it. “Greetings,” he said. Yet to get a shave, he looked like anything but a nobleman himself; but, he did look like a soldier.

While Lucius looked the nobleman’s chest over for an insignia, the black haired man did the same to him. “Looking to request a song, are you?” he asked, doing even more to puff out his chest as he realized Lucius outweighed him nearly twenty pounds. His insignia glittered gold across his chest, a sword beneath a jagged mount; Montisferro.(1)

“I’m wondering how I can help the heir to the Montisferro family, since Miss Canta is traveling with me to Hearth Bay.”

That made the nobleman scrutinize him once more. “I sense you have the better of me, but perhaps because you’ve been on rough times. And you are?”

“Lucius von Solhart.”

Aisha added, “You could call it rough. We had a run-in with pirates along the way.”

“Matteo Montisferro. Weren’t you part of Lord Raymi’s expedition? To… well, it was to Giordana, wasn’t it?” he said, glancing at Aisha with a more analytic eye.

“I’ve been tasked with reporting to the king about the status of the expedition, and the troubles.”

Matteo smiled amicably and gestured to a table. There were people sitting there, but his bodyguards vacated it for them. “Wine please,” he called out to the waitress, then he gestured for Aisha to join. “An unfortunate time for you to arrive with bad news, Solhart. There’s talk of rebellion in the eastern territories. Revolutionaries all the way to Jumeaux. King Arandall has put out the call for an assembly of the lords to discuss how to deal with the threat.”

“Revolutionaries? Revolutionizing what?” Aisha asked as she took her seat at the table, on the far side of Lucius.

That made Matteo’s smile strain, but he had been trained in diplomacy(2). “They want to shackle the nobles. Most of them are talking about religious rights, but those central kingdoms are always crying persecution. You ask me, the only thing persecuting them are the cutthroat merchants ruling their cities. If they had real leadership, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

Lucius kept a stoic face, primarily because he was actively attempting to sober up and drag his mind from pubescent desires to the powers of the body politic. “Then, I imagine you must be going to offer your shiny leather boot to step on them with.”

Matteo laughed, mirthlessly. “You sound almost like those street corner preachers, the ones screaming about civil contracts and all that.”

“Can’t say that I’ve ever heard them, but you could say I recently had my own experience with people craving self-governance. It didn’t go well for them. Some people mistake ideology for strength. Some people think Lumius shines down on whoever is in the right and guides them.”

Matteo paused, as the waitress set down tankards of wine for them. “So which do you believe in, Solhart?”

Lucius grinned and held up his wine in toast. “I believe in steel more than I believe in words. But for some people, they won’t understand the difference between might and right until they have a boot on their throat. In this world, you need power to do anything.”

Matteo narrowed his eyes, sizing him up anew. They toasted and drank. “To the strength of king and country.”

“To Vassermark,” Lucius said, and they drank again.

“So tell me,” Matteo said, “Your journey to Giordana couldn’t have been that bad, and yet you seem to have left something behind.”

“Had it stabbed out in the war. Revolutionaries of a sort, though these southern ones wanted a return to the old, not some new republic. The excursion to the wastelands stirred up enough discontent that it boiled over. I had to cut the ring leader down in the palace at Rackvidd after they broke in.”

Aisha took hold of her wine with both hands, holding it close to herself and staring into the murky depths as she relived the memories. Without quite knowing the truth, Matteo keyed in on her reaction enough to know that Lucius was telling the truth. “They got into Rackvidd?”

After another drink, Lucius wiped his chin off and said, “One of the mountain lords had a stigmata that let him undermine the walls. The leader, Medorosa, cut his way all the way to the palace.”

“How did he do that?”

“The soldiers were at the walls. But, what could one man do? He broke a window and died. That’s the thing with lowborn commanders, isn’t it? They’ll fight to the bitter end. No surrender, no parleys, no diplomacy.”

Matteo’s smile became a sneer and he held up his tankard once more. “Lowborn bastards, what can you say? You might have left an eye behind, but you seem to have brought back another pair.”

“If I’m lucky, perhaps the gods will bless me with a replacement,” Lucius said, bringing the nobleman’s attention back to him as they tapped tankards and drank again. Much to Aisha’s dismay, their talk devolved into discussions of war, of marching and sword fighting. They went over the differences in combat between what Matteo had been drilled with by sword instructors, and what Lucius had encountered of the Giordanans. It all was the noble equivalent of small talk, the almost bragging of young men.

Lucius made sure to never make light of his battle with Medorosa, nor to ever mention the man’s surname. Aisha apologized to the other bard and stayed with them at the table, talking some about the rag tag fleet of ships requisitioned, and how wonderful the bishop had been.

The wine flowed, but it had been watered down and filtered for the two of them. When the candles were burning low and the common folk had grown tired of the guards glaring at them, Matteo at last made overtures of retiring for the night. Then he said, “your reputation as a gambler preceded you, Solhart. I’m quite impressed that your gambling is better with tactics than it is with dice.”

“I’ve gotten better at dice too, since going south. Just took a bit of practice. When we meet in the capital, perhaps I should show you?”

The two of them clasped hands. “I shall have to see if my fiancee lets me.”

“I’ll hope she does.”

“Until we meet again, Solhart, in the king’s court most likely. Maybe he’ll throw a ball.”

“I hope not, I hardly remember how to dance if I’m not swinging a sword around.” They laughed. Matteo departed for lodgings elsewhere. Lucius smiled until the nobleman and his guards left. Then he slammed the last of his wine. “What a douchebag. He even admitted to having a fiancee.”

Aisha put her elbow on the table and leaned her head. “So you people have balls to celebrate upcoming wars?”

“The capital always has balls. What else would they use their fancy dresses for?”

That perked her up. “Fancy dresses?”

“Look, I might know a bit about dancing, but I do not know a single thing about dresses. Don’t look to me for–”

“I’m going to need one, oh great Sir Solhart.”

“I’m not a Sir, and–”

“Just give me the money and I’ll deal with it. You’re drunk anyway, shouldn’t you just be agreeing with me? You came dashing to my rescue and now you’re going to be clutching your purse? My job will be to be your feminine company, won’t it?”

He frowned. “I haven’t even gotten to spend any of that money…”

She stood up. “Too bad, mister hero.” She planted a kiss on his cheek before leaving for the night.

The Montisferro family had bureaucratic power more than anything. Claiming descent from the lands north of Jarnmark, their ancestral lands are thought to be nothing more than dragon lairs. They claimed the ability to travel there freely, and the possession of strongholds, but they were quite fictitious. The power of the Monstisferro family laid in administration work for King Arandall. Diplomacy was a polite way of saying half the skills of an actor, and half bullheadedness about honor.