Mercurial Menace
Tenth Day of Olweje-eza (Olweje Ascendant), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)
Forcing a smile on salt chafed lips you smile, a wordless lie, and then at last you ask what he plans to do about rebuilding the city after the fires, which of the nobles he plans to bring into his confidence, questions you would not have asked of the true Ansefu for it is none of your affair how a foreign king manages his land but to which now you bend a careful ear.
"One clan chief is much the same as the other, are they not?" the false king waves vaguely towards shore, then snaps his fingers so fast they almost seem to blur in the air. "I know perhaps I can allow Ohun to retire to the lonely shores that call him and instead seek out learned men like you have gathered in your company, they were more skilled in dealing with the Anjo-Oru were they not?"
"I would not be too hasty in seeking strangers for such company, for they would all too easily be foes..."
He peers at you with wide eyes that almost seem to gleam in the pale sunlight that passes under clouds. "But you were a stranger and well did meeting you serve the folk of Lirman. Why, not only did you deal with the Anjo-Oru, but you made bargains with the spirits of lonely places and you banished those who had taken the place of the lord of the Iranea. It just seems to be a matter of choosing the right stranger does it not?"
"And picking mushrooms in the woods is 'just' a matter of knowing to avoid the poisonous ones," you snort. "I still wouldn't want to eat nothing but mushrooms from the woods the summer though."
"You would starve even if you were not poisoned..."
Not the answer you had been expecting, though some of your distraction might be from seeing Zaia climb on deck, armed and ready for battle under the dusty grey cloak he had taken to wearing to keep out the rain.
Seeing your confusion the false king explains: "Mushrooms are less solid than they seem, just a bit of fluff and an aroma under the nose, you would be more lucky trying to eat Goldheart
like a rabbit."
"I do not know the word..." you start, but Zaia breaks in.
"It is the flower
chamomile which the Greeks called Earth Apple and the Goths call the Water of Life... of which pardon lord, but I have seen none in the islands, east or west."
A flash of annoyance passes over the spirit's stolen features, then one of amusement. "Well that will teach me not to try to make interesting conversation before the main event." He shakes his head in mock sadness. "The 'king' is fine save for his pride. I tied him up in his cabin and took his clothes. Wanted to see if you could take a bit of a jest..."
"I see no jest here," you reply sharply, though you feel relieved to hear that nothing worse had been done to him. "He is a guest on this ship and you have laid violent hands on him."
"Oh... then were the blows of club and slash of sword and conjuring of ice all the caresses of friendship?" he laughs again, all the more unnerving for the fact that you hear no mockery to it, just honest mirth. "Strange is thine courtesy."
"Such was our path from the bowels of the beast," you reply, carefully measuring your words. "I make no claim to virtue in the matter and if it is pardons you seek then I offer them freely."
"Well of course you do, they cost you nothing," comes the cheerful reply. "But that if you could bear the weight...?"
"Enough!" Esha's voice rings out proud and commanding as you have never heard her speak. "One game into another leading, one link to another binding and we will have forged our own chain for your amusement. Neither justice nor honor interests me in the least, only this: what will it take for you to leave this place without making more trouble than we would otherwise get into?"
"Do I seem like a seer to you
fair lady?" the false Ansefu leers, though in such a blatant manner it would not look out of place on the village green at festival. "How should I know what you otherwise might get into?"
"She means the trouble of destroying the form you now wear and banishing you whence you came," you reply reaching for your sword, even as you keep your tone neutral, almost bored.
He changes manner quick as an eel between your fingers, though not as you had expected. Instead of charging one of you the false Ansefu shrugs and says. "Fine then I need a warm dry place for five of my get to live as men, they are man-like in the main, though they can at least
slip off a face or two and they would go mad with boredom without the company of their near fellows, some place near the shore."
You look to Esha, but she shrugs. 'I don't have to know about every strange thing', her expression seems to say.
"Youngest is eighty five turns of the moon summers, oldest is a hundred and twenty," the odd thing replies now all business. How had you gone from potential foes to fostering? you wonder bewildered even as you work out the numbers in your head.
Youngest is six and a bit, oldest is ten... and all of them can change their faces and God alone knows how they have been raised. Yet in the balance... it is a way to avoid making a foe with a long memory.
"You almost took my life so it's only fair that you put your backs to helping grow my kin-blood," the spirit adds sounding very
definitive about the matter.
Do you take the deal?
[] Yes, at least it will spare you a foe, how bad can children be no matter how strange
[] No, you will not take on something of such import as fostering or apprenticing children from what seems a whim
OOC: If this seems strange and surreal... it is supposed to. Proteans do have a kind of logic, but it is very much their own and it can at times be rather dreamlike. 
