You feel... refreshed, in body mind and spirit, as you dress again after the baths. Apart from reaffirming that Jules now and forever had your back, there was so very much grime and dirt and sweat and tears and blood you didn't even notice until it had been washed away.
You feel human again - you flick your tail, and remind yourself it's a figure of speech now - and far more ready to meet with the local Big Good and Questgiver.
"Add new clothing to the expenses list," Sekhmet mutters as they pull on their pants. "At least one dress outfit. Can't be helped for now, but I already know we'll be lucky if it's less than five Crowns each."
"Holy shit," you say. "That much?"
"I saw girls with spindles on the ride up," they replied. "Spinning yarn. They don't have the tech to sell you $50 tee-shirts with your coat of arms on it here."
"Yet."
Sekhmet puts a finger over her nose and mouth, ears flat, thinking. Then they agree: "Yet."
There's a knight on horseback waiting for your party when they exit the baths.
He almost looks bored, with a long, drooping mustache; paler than most of the other people here, you notice, who tend to be at least a bit tan. His armor is plain, and his shield was red, with a gold hare rising up from it and cracking open a gold pomegranate.
You looked around at the others, exiting after you and Sekhmet. Hikaru raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
"I would see your letters of introduction," he said.
You take it out of your pocket and wordlessly pass over the envelope. Rather than cracking it open, he examined the wax seal - running the thumb of his ungauntleted shield hand over it - before handing it back, and repeated this process for each of the others.
Ace glared at him as she handed over hers, but looked more confused than actually angry.
"You will need escort into the palace, which I and my people will provide," he said. "We have a carriage for you as well. The Most Honorable Contessa will extend her hospitality to you for this audience, which will include a light meal -"
"- Oh thank God," Ace blurted out, earning a sour look from the knight.
"- as the Contessa is very busy, and has little time to spare given the present crisis," the knight said, a little louder. "I will reiterate that you are to afford her all the courtesies of her station and all gratitude for the privileges and protection she extends to you."
Shut up and listen when she speaks or your career will be a short one, in other words. You feel a chill down your spine.
Hikaru looks up at him. "Sir," he says, "we will endeavour to be unfailingly polite, but beg for you to be patient with mistakes and oversights we strangers to this city may make. We are far from home and... agree that the situation is as serious as she considers it."
"Thank you. Yes. Our guild mage has the right of it," Alesha says, her shoulders dropping in relief. "Unless told otherwise, we will not speak unless spoken to and address her as... the Most Honorable Contessa, you said?"
The knight smiles, barely, thin-lipped and tense. He pivots his hips, slightly, and his horse backs up with four rhythmic clops on the cobblestones. "She has further titles, which you will learn, but the Most Honorable is sufficient for now."
Yikes. You nod.
"We're... all very confused and scared," you say before really thinking about it. "And will try to allay her fears, as well as our own."
He nods. "There's wisdom in that."
You realize you're holding your breath, and plosively sigh. "Sir, may we know your name?" you ask.
There is a long moment of silence where you worry you've offended the man on the horse.
Who probably has class levels. More of them than you.
It's - more or less - statistically impossible to hit someone 9 levels above you, Hikaru's voice says in your memory, which you would rather it didn't.
He puts his hand, shield and all over his heart, his armor clinking against itself at the gesture. "Ser Tomas Del Conejoloma Valencia," he says. "At her service, and yours if we are comrades."
"...you're related to that guy back at Costa Dulce?" Sekhmet asks, ears flicking.
"My brother in law," he confirms.
"He's a good man," Alesha murmurs.
"So my sister tells me," Tomas says, that flicker of a smile on his face before he turns his horse around. "Come. Let us not keep a Contessa waiting."
The carriage - keeping to the theme, all done up in red and gold - passes with a few bumps along the boulevard at the edge of the city wall, with towers both on the wall to your right and jutting from the domed buildings to the left.
"Minarets," Hikaru mutters. "I wonder..."
But whatever he wondered, he doesn't elaborate on, as he sees the statue of Gnomon pointing his wand down to a huge building with high arches, with beautiful tessellated shapes carved into it in repeating fractal motifs of triangles and hexagons, in white and turquoise and gold and sandstone, topped with red tiles and more of those spires. Men and women, human and otherwise, in robes, were walking and talking, some sitting in the shade of trees planted along the boulevard or next to a perfectly octagonal fountain's basin.
And you all go past that, and upwards on a grade, up a hill; there was less town and more green and more up the further you went, with the wall still on our right and curving left, channeling up to -
"The Red Alcazar," said Sir Tomas.
And it was red; made of red and black brick, with octagonal turrets and square walls with an octagonal tower keep. The moat was a natural lake that spilled over into the river; you spy a soldier sitting at the wall's edge casting a line down into it.
You stop, for a moment, at the gatehouse; Ser Tomas saluted it, before an Ubastim man with pince-nez glasses, in black robes, came to examine everyone's letters - again, without opening them; once he was satisfied, you continued in, parked, and exited - all of you needing a moment to stretch. Tomas passes his horse's reins to a Vulpecian stablegirl with a curt nod, dismounted, and points you towards a small building in a grove next to the keep.
There, under the shade of an orange tree, sits a woman at a table. She has dark skin and curly black hair tied up in a neat bun; dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a sort of resting amused face. She wears a plain breastplate over a deep blue dress with puffed sleeves, and a gold medallion you recognize as the Solar Cross of Aurora. She finished signing a paper before handing it off to the Ubasti courtier from earlier and muttered something to him, before turning to everyone and sweeping her arm over both our seats and a collection of plates and bowls of nibbles, deftly dipping her hand to pick up some kind of tart before drawing it back.
"Sit," she said. "I'll take those letters. I assume you know who I am."
Alesha blurted out, "It's an honor, Most Honorable Contessa," after you and literally everyone else in the party sat down - before realizing she should probably also sit. And started to fumble for her letter a second after you handed over yours.
Leesh did most of your inter-guild diplomacy, so that didn't bode
at all.
"Charmed," said the Contessa, before taking a bite of her pastry with one hand. With the other, she cracked open your letters, one by one, and skimmed them.
She took another bite, and no one said anything. Or moved.
Intuition + Empathy + Flammite said:
After putting down the last of the papers, she turned to you again, and you get that same sense she was amused at your discomfort - just a little.
"Please, do eat. This audience is as much for your benefit as mine, honorable 'Venturers. I know you've been on the road and on campaign, and just learned you did so to my benefit."
"What would you recommend?" Alesha asked, then blinked and brushed her hand up her forehead and along her ear. "...Most, uh, Honorable Contessa."
The Contessa' eyebrows shot up to the sky for a long second before she answered.
"The candied almonds are excellent, dame Herezhade, as is this tortilla - they've started experimenting with including that sort of turnip the Yao are selling us, and I must remember to tell the cook it's a success," she says. "If you're worried about coming off as mercenary, don't - my man in Costa Dulce reports that a meal and a chance to speak with me is the very least thing I owe you."
Alesha takes an almond from it's bowl and raises it to her lips; You very slowly take a slice of the omelette the Contessa had called a tortilla. The others, just as gingerly as you, get morsels from the table. Hikaru uses a piece of flatbread as a plate, and you follow his lead.
You take a bite of the tortilla, and it is delicious. Warm, dense, with a lot of caramelized onions and potato and a bit of pepper and herbs.
"This is very good, Most Honorable Contessa," you say, and the others shift in their seats. "Thank you for your hospitality. I'm... grateful that we had the chance to meet, and hope that I can continue to contribute to the, the uh,"
shit shit shit
"The safety, security and continued prosperity of this beautiful city," Sekhmet says.
"Gorgeous really," Alesha said, then winced.
You bow your head and think fast. "Just so. I've never seen anything like it."
Well... that's not quite true. But it's different being here than it is to see it even in VR.
"I have worked very hard to keep it so, Dame Yeowoo," the Contessa tells you, nodding slightly in your direction. "An usual name around here, I may add. A nom de la guerre, I take it?"
You absolutely cannot tell the Contessa that the name you go by is a joke about having big tits.
"It's, uh, my father was Korean," you stammer.
Hikaru coughs into his hand. "From the Principality of Goryeo."
"Yes," you say, too fast, and you can feel your ears flatten down the sides of your skull.
"So I have heard," the Contessa says. "A very common given name for Vulpecian women there, or at least those who try to make their fortune here."
You blink, and then laugh, scratching the back of your head. "That tracks," you admit. "It, uh, means vixen."
She laughs, putting a fan over her mouth. "Of course it does," she says. "About as many if not more home-grown foxfolk sellswords choose to call themselves Zorro."
Sekhmet barely muffles her scoff with a hand over her mouth, mortified. You privately agree with her that there's other reasons for the name, but...
"We aren't here to talk about your 'venturing aliases, of course, fascinating as the topic may be," the Contessa says, pouring herself a cup of
oh good lord that's real coffee. "I came here to ask you all a question. Simple to pose, complex to answer."
"Just ask, Most Honorable Contessa." Alesha says, too quick.
The Contessa deftly pours caramel-colored syrup from a small bottle into her coffee before looking up.
"Why have you all come to Viacruz?" she asks.
You take a very deep breath.
There was an edge to that question. Simple to pose, complex to answer. The others look at you expectantly, Alesha wincing.
"...speaking only for those of my Free Company present," you say, slowly and softly - turning the words over in your head as you speak them - "we came to Viacruz because that's where most Adventurers near Yberia or Al'Qebulan go to seek their fortunes. But if you're asking why all of us came here, why so many of us came here, we don't know."
The Contessa has her fan over her mouth, eyes closed, and then she nods. And makes a gesture with her fan hand a lot like Jules' twirled move it along.
"One moment we were in our homes," you say. "Then there's a... bit of lost time... and we found ourselves on the Shores of Awakening. One of the many, many islands off the coast with Shores of Awakening, I think - I didn't realize how many until we saw the camps."
You sigh. "We don't know what happened, Most Honorable Contessa. We're as confused and frightened as your people are."
"As frightened as we?" the Contessa says, eyebrows up in the clouds. "We, who found an army at our door, overnight? We, who wonder what other sovereigns were shaken awake by a vizier telling them of thousands of strangers with weapons at their gates?"
You try to meet her gaze for a moment.
You cannot.
And yet...
Head bowed, you say, softly, "We, torn from our friends and children and our homes and our jobs, who suddenly have weapons and need to use them against wandering monsters, without the slightest idea how we got here or why any of this is happening, or how we'll eat or where we'll sleep tomorrow? Our fears are different, Most Honorable one, but no lesser."
Hikaru has brought his hand to his throat, grimacing, teeth gritted. Most of the others have expressions as shocked; Ace has her head in her hands and is staring at her shoes.
Yeah, what were you going to do, lie to her? For all you know she has the Flammite boon and the authority to execute you when it dings and there's crap.
The Contessa looks at you, eyes over her fan, for one long moment.
Aura + Rapport + Sylphan said:
Then snaps the fan closed and swirls her little cup of coffee.
"You are then very new to this life. And our kingdom," she says.
Everyone slumps in their chairs and sighs.
"It's a long story," you say. "One we don't have time for. But we never... we never intended to come here, and my Company wants to earn our keep until..."
Alesha says, "Until we find a way home, Milady Contessa."
And the Contessa nods, thank God.
(Probably Sylphan.)
And steeples her fingers, leaning on the table.
"You will have opportunities to," she says. "My scribes will give your free company the writs of passage they'll need to stay and find work. I appreciate your candor, miss."
And
that's when you're able to exhale.
Thanks to @NekoIncardine for prereading.
Who knows when I'll post 2.2.3? Probably Monday, at this rate. No promises. I'll try to get us back on track ASAP.
Guess I'll just have to wait and find out!
