calescent | swiftness

swiftness

Sarelle and the Ardelay twins go to their inn. They are greeted there the following day by Ekador apparently-Serlast, who says he'll be another two days settling up his affairs and then they can all go to Welce.

Ekador packs quite lightly for someone who's leaving the country on short notice and otherwise bears negligible personality resemblance to Loel. The carriage isn't particularly crowded as they make their way back to the port to find a boat leading back to Welce.

"There are three stops to make," Kiri tells him as they drive. "Although we'll land close to Chialto, I don't think that should be the first place we go. You'll have a much smoother go of taking over as uncontested prime if you can demonstrate at least minor magical power on demand - I don't think fielding questions of your legitimacy is anyone's idea of a good time and it would be better to have more than Sarelle's word to lean on. It doesn't help that anyone but her will mistake you for sweela. The Serlast estate is a couple of days by carriage from Chialto, there's a forest on the property, it's supposed to be special to the Serlasts, and going and having a walk around it might give you an idea of how to perform some minor visible magic."

"Might not. Loel figured out how to do magic without jumping into the Marisi River," shrugs Aleko.

"It might not. But it's worth a try if you don't have an epiphany before we get there," says Kiri. "Anyway, some of your cousins are living at the Serlast estate - off the top of my head, one of Valdin's children, his younger sister, and one of his grandsons, but I don't know how you're related to the family so I don't know who they are to you. You can kick them out if you want, but I recommend getting to know them and soliciting their help with the family business, and you have plenty of room to continue to board them. The Chialto house of the Serlasts was empty last I heard, but I'd be willing to bet you can re-hire Valdin's old servants if you want them, and you're entitled to maintain your own suite at the palace, too. You can divide your time between these places more or less however you please, although if you neglect the palace then the royal family may start issuing pointed invitations, and you might want to become acquainted with Prince Isten in particular, as he is heir to the throne and it's his succession you're necessary to ratify later."

"Isten's eleven," Aleko adds. "Coru, quiet."

"Questions?" Kiri inquires. "Do you want me to write any of that down, possibly in chart format?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"...I can't swear that there is not a person entombed in a tree anywhere in Welce," he says. "It would be possible to do it. But there are none in as much of the forest as I saw."

"Well, if you find one, you... I have no idea what you should do if you find one."

"I would prefer to leave it there, all things considered. Unless I believed I could contact some living relatives of the deceased. And I would hesitate to do even that."

"Yeah, they'd probably fuss at you about it."

"So I imiagine," he agrees.

"And even if they didn't think for a second that it was you who did it they might be all, 'this is the responsibility of a Serlast, you are the Serlast prime, give me a box of gold or I will knock on your door at inconvenient times of day'."

"Which is a situation I would prefer to avoid."

"Yeah. Although you can probably afford to give, like, a few people boxes of gold if it happens anyway unless the Serlasts are in secretly dire financial straits that I do not know about."

"If we are, I don't know about them either."

"Sounds like a subplot in a novel. Here is the heir from far-off Malinqua, but his cousins have ruined the fortune during the interregnum, how will they hide this and recover the family money before he finds out? Meanwhile also brewing civil war and, I don't know - a plague, a romance, an assassination?"