When we get back to the inn, I find my place at the table, look at the stews on display, and think.
And frown.
"Siobhan, what's your poison?" I ask, pulling out a chair for her, trusting someone who took a crash course in meme to catch my meaning.
"They don't have it," she says, and sits. "But the house white's good."
"Sweet," I say, putting a silver Rook on the table - stamped with a raven on the front and a castle tower on the back, no wider than a button on a controller. "Hikaru, what's yours?"
He blinks, then nods, taking the chair Sio pulls out for him. "Sweet hot tea, and thank you," he said. "I want to avoid even the possibility of intoxication right now."
"Worried you have less room in you to put those drinks?" Sio asks, trying to affect flat and glib dismissal; sympathetic despite herself.
Hikaru tilts his head at her before responding. "Say instead that I found the earlier discussion sobering."
"Can't blame you," you sigh, bringing out a second silver coin. "Need to check notes. Anyone else want in on this?" I asked.
Sekhmet and Alesha exchange glances.
"Need to check up on some things - touch base with Tayeb and Shadi," Sekhmet says.
"Ah hell," Ace sighs. "Yeah, uh, I'm with making sure Shadi's okay."
"I trust you to ask the right questions," Alesha says, inclining her head to me. "And to convey the answers when we return."
I nod, and wave to Ace, and my breath hitches a little. But she can take care of herself, especially with Leesh and Sekhmet along.
I get our drinks, including white wine for me, and a plate of bread, cheese, and pate for us to snack on; I had the feeling we were going to need the energy. It's a little less than four silvers. I tell the inkeep to keep the change, he blinks at me for it.
"You know your tab will cover this easily," he says, something dangerous in the low growl.
"We want to keep our room and our board costs separate," I say, looking up at his beard, his tanned hands and face, the permanent frown of his wrinkles, into his eyes for just a moment. "I uh - don't think we asked your name."
He holds up a coin between a thumb and forefinger, sees it curve slightly as it gives, then nods at me. "You didn't."
I offer my hand to shake. "Deedee Yeowoo," I say. And, after a moment, sigh. "It's a long story."
He clasps mine, good and strong. "Marcos," he says. "Marcos Tercero Robledas. Why have you come?"
My ears flatten. "Because someone in the village did something so stupid that the Contessa thought we'd be less of a pain in your ass," I say, completely deadpan.
He blinks.
And then laughs, shaking my hand and in fact my entire arm hard enough that if I didn't have bullshit kung fu wizardpunchery it would have dislocated something.
"Afraid she'll have one less barrel of ruby, huh?" he asks. "To dazzle northerers who'd be happy enough drinking honey."
"If a one barrel shortage is all we find, she'd be happy with that, Senor Robledas." I say, seriously. "For the record, I hope that's all we find too."
He grunts, nodding understanding. "It's going to get a lot louder here in two days," he says.
"The rover's guild. I know," I say, sighing. "Trust me, we want out of your hair fast too. We just don't think it'll be that simple."
"Bah. Enjoy the quiet while you can, priestess," he says.
I shrug. "Here's to hoping we'll get to."
On that it turned out we could agree.
I returned - as a Vulpecian serving-maid with strawberry blond hair and tail set down what we ordered, and a couple of things we didn't.
I looked up at her and she immediately curtseyed, dropping off a platter of jams and pickles in the same move, and muttered "Courtesy of the house, ser," before whirling to the next table.
I blinked and gestured to Sio and Heeks, who returned my confusion.
"Then your talk with the innkeeper went well," Siobhan guesses.
"Marcos Tercio Robledas," I say, sighing. "I guess it did, I'm just rattled and the 'ser' didn't help."
"If it helps, she probably assumed you were an acolladed knight, rather than the other assumption," Hikaru points out.
That did make me feel a little better. It also made Sio flick her eyes at me, so I shrugged and busied myself with the food.
"Looks like grapes, figs, quince jam, olives, and - baba ghanoush?" I blink.
"All grown here, cheap," Sio says. "Because we're all friends here now, they sent us a nice fruit basket."
I noticed with a blink that her words had switched back to attempts to sound terminally online - like a Player, like the rest of the party - from her masterful mundane high fantasy diction around the nobility. I almost want to ask if that's a Thornite boon - and then I realize why I have to.
"How did you get so good at hot-swapping the kind of language you use, anyway?" I ask. "Because if that's a Boon one of the bad guys might have picked up..."
She purses her lips to blow out a long breath, as if exhaling a smoke ring, and spreads chicken liver pate over bread to buy her time to find the words. "Part of it's accepting Thorne as my personal savior, but a lot of it is good old job training, just in case I had to warm a seat or act the herald," she says. "There are ways of doing it that don't need magic. How's the saying go? If you hear hoofbeats, don't look for unicorns?"
Hikaru snorts into his teacup. "Zebra," he says. "It's 'don't look for zebra.' But the point's well put."
I take a fig, and split it open with my thumbs. It's cool, even cold, in my hands as the flesh splits open, revealing juicy pink and many small seeds.
"We need to define some terms," I say. "I need a crash course on the kind of politics and law I can expect here, because I expect this to be ugly and turn worse."
"So you asked me for advice, because I know the player-facing lore," Hikaru says.
Siobhan adds, "And I'm a local who's seen too much of this crap."
I nod as I scrape the sweet out of the fig with my front teeth. Hikaru sips his tea, mouth twisted down.
"There's only one term in this whole mess that I think I understand, and I'm not even sure of that," I say.
"What, really?" Sio gestures with the point of her slice of bread, created by where she's eaten it. "Which?"
"That this year's a jubilee," I said. "You said that the jubilee means the - problems -" I didn't want to say 'sabotage' out loud where we could be overheard - "we find could do the most harm. Unless there's something about the Contessa's nth year in office I should know about, that means when debts get forgiven, right?"
Siobhan looks at me for the longest instant in my life before looking down at the ground, hand over her mouth. "That's the term I expected you to understand the least," she says. "How in Gnomon's name...?"
"It came up at Saturday school," I say, smiling a bit despite myself. "It, uh, has religious implications back home."
"A lot of people could gain a fortune," Hikaru says. "Or, if they hold the debts, lose one. How much of a fortune..."
"Is something we badly need to learn, but yes, you've got it right," Siobhan says. "But this will - okay. I'm not as familiar with how Yberian taxes work as I am with my home turf, but they're all broadly Omphalan and broadly similar so we'll just need to talk to Orlando about the finer points."
"Assuming he's not involved?" I ask.
Hikaru shakes his head. "My guess is that he collects taxes directly as agricultural products. If any farm suffers, he loses money. A lot of money."
"If the lord had been a complete idiot, I wouldn't have written him off as responsible," Sio agrees. "But he knew enough to allow the investigation, and he knows to shear sheep rather than flay them."
I hold up my hand. "Okay. Backing up, here's what I know. Lord Orlando owns the land; these guys rent it to grow crops, which they give him as rent."
"I imagine some have their own family land, have ancestral homes, that the Molinaro Lords protect in return for tax and tribute," Sio says. "The big names - Cabello, Kosmas, Robledas - almost certainly do."
"You left out the Quinyones," I point out.
Hikaru groans and slides a hand down his face. "Because they aren't landowners, and haven't been, and may never be. It's in the name."
I frown, thinking back to half-forgotten Spanish classes from more than half a lifetime ago. "Quin-yones - no, Quinyones, n with a tilde... Quint? Fives? Fifths?" I shake my head.
"Fifths," Hikaru says. "As in, land divided into fifths. They're a family of sharecroppers."
Sio tilts her head in Hikaru's direction, hand over her mouth. "I had just seen what passes for Quinyone lands. They're many small farms, not few large ones. No one would make their own weeding and upkeep so hard unless they had no choice."
"I hear so much about the holy laws against slavery," I snarl. "Love to see them actually followed."
Siobhan has the courtesy to grimace. "Preaching to the choir, I've heard it put," she sighs. "In theory, that's the kind of situation that the jubilees and grain laws are supposed to prevent, combined with it not being quite as simple as 'food goes in, soldiers come out.'"
I take a deep breath.
"Go on," Hikaru says, while I hack some cheese off a wedge.
"The laws set bounties on crops, minimum prices at markets, reasonable demands per acre," Sio says, taking out a copper coin. A Sheaf. "One sheaf of wheat to the Sheaf - one pound of milled flour to the Sheaf. There's a minimum amount of wheat, and other amounts of other cash crops, a manor lord may demand from each acre his cottars and bonded serfs work over the course of 7 years."
"And after that the slate is wiped clean," I say. "The debt erased. A Jubilee year."
"More than that," Siobhan says. "After that, a farmer may see profit, in coin. May earn more than he owes; may sell wheat and goods he grows to his lord. Why should the lord object, when he can turn that wheat into gold and that gold into the true product of a manor?"
"The true product of a manor being?" I ask.
Sio stops to stare at me. I stare right back, eyes meeting hers, sipping wine.
"You're serious," she says.
"When necessary," I say. "The true product of a manor being...?"
Hikaru and Siobhan answered at the same time; Hikaru's answer was "Knights," and Siobhan's "Adventurers."
They look at each other.
"Bannerets to the lord and his leiges," she clarifies. "Not just Oathsworn riders - that's an assumption your players seem to make - but rangers and magi and battlefield healer-priests. All of them are knights. You have to understand that most manors squeeze out marginal profit at best, and more often bleed money slowly; the real profit in them is that they're places from which knights errant can be trained and ride forth."
"Either to conquer richer neighbors, or to recover, and spend, the proverbial dragon's hoard," Hikaru muses.
I take a deep breath. "Which is why Orlando is encouraging his personal chambermaid to learn magic and study as a no-shit Wizard. That's his real job. Worst case he's the guy who found the Contessa's new court wizard."
"And at best, meet Iustina," Hikaru says. "His new court wizard."
"For example," Sio says, before tossing an olive in her mouth. "But if there are monsters in the vineyards - and we'll see the truth of that real soon now - then that's a great way to not only make the fields less productive and force, say, the Contessa to drop some gold on our heads to fix the mess but also a great way to get the peasantry deeper into debt in ways the Lord may be forced not to forgive."
My eyes open fully, as I remember five years of sullen conversations with doctors. "Monsters jumping peasants mean injuries," I realize. "Permanent disabling injuries. Family you support but who can no longer work."
Hikaru pales. "That's... more subtle than I expected from our suspects," he says.
"It's worse than you may be used to," Siobhan says. "Remember, the lord may and must demand a part of each acre's yield - regardless of if those acres are or can be worked. Losing a strong back to an infirmary bed not only threatens that family, but the church acting as hospital."
"And if enough of your family is hospitalized, it threatens the Lord's tax to the Contessa - if not the entire harvest." Hikaru's breath hitches. "Would you believe I've seen that scale of stress on a whole people, when I was younger? How little I want to see it come to pass again?"
"Let's not give someone who didn't go through the Screaming Twenties our Screaming Twenties flashbacks, shall we?" I say, squeezing my eyes closed hard, and remembering the hospital I wasn't allowed near while my father was in it.
When I open my eyes, I see Sio tilting her head at Hikaru with an expression of... something softer than I've come to expect from her, and then my eyes flicker to Hikaru, and I grit my teeth at his gratitude.
Why the hell should Heek's gratitude for Sio's sympathy bother me? What the hell is wrong with me?
Sio puts a hand under her nose and turns her eyes to me. "Your talents as healer and Alesha's as healer and counselor may be more important to resolving this than your ability to fight," she says. "I've seen what you've done with Ace's injuries. That level of ability may be required to keep a broken back from bankrupting a family."
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure than preventing someone's life from getting ruined like that, believe me," I say, meeting her eyes - and seeing a little past her, to a pair of cat ears sticking out from under a red turban, attached to red, golden, and black robes swaying in. "Except maybe preventing the pain in the first place, but - huh."
Sio and Hikaru followed my gaze to the - woman, apparently, who was walking - if not staggering - between the tables, passing the blazing altar to Flamma and sloppily tipping in the glugging contents of a small bottle that made the flames leap. Three rapid shuffles to her right, away from it, and towards the bar to slap a coin on the table: an alto wrought from smoke calls out.
"Wine!" she demands, voice warbling. "Your good stuff, not whatever you're passing off to the venturers as your finest quality, Terce."
Marcos Tercero Robledas stiffens and his eyes meet hers. "I'm proud to serve it," he says between gritted teeth, as he pours her one. "And for what you're giving me you'd better be happy to drink it, Almez."
Sio's ear twitches.
"You don't think -" Hikaru hisses to her.
"- yes. That absolutely is Jatu," she responds.
I take a deep breath. Okay. I can deal with Hikaru and Siobhan sharing enough of a wavelength to finish those sentences later, and probably need to. The important thing here: this is the matriarch of the Cabello family and spiritual head of the local Flammites, Jatu Ibn'basti Al'mez, throwing her weight around.
Drunkenly.
I look up at her swaying, drink acquired, slowly to our table.
My ears creep up my skull and a shiver creeps down myspine.
"I'm beginning to see why Iustina hesitated to talk about her," Hikaru mutters. "If she's often drunk like this -"
"She's not drunk," I say very quickly.
Sio's eyes sweeps over her, and then to her feet as she comes towards us - of course, towards us - in a shambling gait.
"No, she's not," Sio murmurs.
Good. If she sees it too, I'm not crazy.
Jatu Almez leans heavy on our table, grinning, right in my face.
"Ah, there you are," she says to me, too clearly. "You're the one who's given my girl so much trouble this morning."
Deep breath, now, Deedee. Look her right in the eye.
"I was getting her out of trouble, actually, Matriarch," I say. "You raised a forthright child, and we were glad of her help."
"Maybe so, but still, you're a meddler," she says, waggling her finger - and her cup - under my nose. "Meddling in the- the village, my family's affairs."
Sio and Hikaru stiffen, Hikaru trying to scoot back but finding his tall chair hooked on one very deliberately placed foot of the Matriarch's. I return my gaze to hers.
"May I humbly request something of you, Matriarch?" I say.
"Demanding, too," she says, but tilts her head, indicates to me to go on.
"If you're going to test me, could we do it outside of the inn we're staying? I don't want to pay for Tercero's broken furniture and neither do you," I say.
For a moment I regret it, as my table - and most of the rest of the inn, who's now watching this - look at the plain astonishment on the Matriarch's face.
Then she laughs, rising up out of my face and to her actual full height - not her earlier, hunched, practiced sloppiness. Purring and laughing, at once, a delighted witches cackle.
"Afraid to get laid on your ass by a drunk woman?" she purrs.
"No, but I might be afraid of you kicking my ass," I respond.
She laughs even harder, before bowing and pointing to the front door with her cup. It's a shallow bow, but it's enough to let me exhale, and my companions too.
"Sensible. Very sensible," she says. "Very well. I would like to see what you're made of, venturer Cleric, though you've given me a fair idea. And you seem to have me at a disadvantage."
"A very slight one," I say, bowing back. "Deedee Yeowoo, mendicant of Sylphan, here to help."
"Hmn," she says, turning her gaze to my frozen pixie companions. "Follow me," she says, turning to lead me out the door.
Like a fool, I follow her.
