More Loose Ends: Oct. 8th, 2010

[The Librarian]

No tears came as Phaen sat at the bankers desk in her cabin, reading the letter from Azrael.

"I wish to inform you of the death of your mother, Lady Elmier Douquette. "

Phaen read the line several times and the only emotion that came to her was the fondness she felt for Azrael and the humour she felt in his explanations. Nothing touched her heart for her mother. The two women had not spoken since arguing about Ian Xanthe, and whether he should be trusted or cast out. Phaen sided with Ian, she always did.

There always seemed to be loose ends when it came to Sosaria, Phaen had returned twice now to tie them up and now it seemed another trip was needed. Mei shouldn't be burdened by Phaen's mother any longer, Phaen felt a pang of guilt at being party to the oath that bound one of her best friends, she hadn't realized asking Mei to watch over Nyx would be binding. Phaen had to set things right with the Sluagh.

With a soft smile Phaen spoke to her balefire, "I guess you can't leave your birthplace forever."

Phaen felt the soft caress of her fire like a cat nuzzling against her cheek. A pang of regret touched her heart as she stood and brushed her hand against the web of metal tubing that held her fire secured to the ceiling of her cabin.

"I won't leave you like Ian did, I will return as soon as I can," Phaen told her fire gently, petting her as she did so.

Phaen felt trust and affection from her fire, the simple feelings they shared, kept loneliness at bay. Inammorta's Fury was so much more than just a ship; her black sails and deep blue scaled hull had become Phaen's companion and confidant, her ward and refuge. The two were star crossed lovers, and had an almost unbreakable bond. More than once Phaen had been told that a man could become jealous of her relationship with the Fury. Phaen new that no man could compare...

Turning for her door Phaen pulled her captains coat from her chair and pulled up her sharkskin boots; preparations among her crew needed to be made before an extended absence. Phaen stepped out on the deck of the Fury to a bustle of activity, it seems the Atoll they found and its center island were inhabited; the current residence being wild boar. Cookie would be happy of something other than fish to cook with; the Redcap had been complaining.

"Patrick," Phaen called out and jumped with a start as the Clurichaun appeared at her left elbow; his shock of red hair and shining emerald eyes staring up at her.

"I need you to ask Mister Cadwallander, the Navigator, the Quartermaster and the Cook to please join me in my cabin," she told her cabin boy.

"Only if I can stay for the meeting," he grinned up at her.

"Do you ever miss a meeting?" Phaen asked smiling down at him.

"No, but I am never included," he pouted.

"Exactly..." Phaen said with a wink.

Patrick caught her meaning and beamed a smile that could light up a room, then ran off to fetch the Captains crew.

The Captain walked to the railing and looked out over the harbour the Fury was anchored in. The Atoll and its central island were not on any map or chart any of the crew knew of. There were no signs of construction on any of the smaller islands they'd explored; chance seemed to have rolled her dice and handed Phaen a mystery. Phaen had named the Atoll the Isles of Still Whispers. After all the ship and crew had been through since leaving the Port of Westgate, it was good to have safe harbour for a while. Smiling Phaen turned on her heel and headed to her cabin to sort out her temporary absence from the ship.

The meeting lasted long enough for Phaen's crew to learn of her mothers death, and her need to leave for a short while. They discussed resupplying the ship, then taking her back to Port Westgate where she could make arrangements to return to Sosaria. While away the crew would sail back to Still Whispers and if they could find her, they'd finish mapping the Atoll as well as surveying its resources. Patrick had a chimerical seagull, it would be used to keep in contact once either the ship or Phaen returned to the Port of Westgate. They'd decided then how to pursue keeping the islands for themselves if it indeed wasn't claimed by anyone currently, or laying in someone's territory.

Cookie came back a short while after everyone got back to work, bearing a tray set with a small teapot, cup and saucer, biscuits and sliced lemon. Phaen looked up from her charts and bit her lower lip as the Redcap shuffled into her cabin.

"I beat you at cards last night, I didn't think I'd see tea again for at least a week," Phaen said half joking.

"I let ya win..." Cookie grumbled.

"Did you now?" Phaen smiled

With a grunt Cookie set the tray next to Phaen's charts and looked her straight in the eyes, "ya going to be alright on yer own?"

"I dun like ya being on yer own," Cookie muttered.

Phaen poured a cup of the tea and squeezed a slice of lemon into it, picking up a biscuit she took a sip and explained how she'd made the trip a few times now, and had trusted people to meet up with along the journey. The two talked for a while longer about the crews moral and that even though she was not on board Cookie was still not allowed to cook Patrick. Cookie placed a hand on Phaen's before he left and quietly told her not to stay away long and left with a nod of his head. With a soft smile Phaen finished her tea already missing her cook and wondering where the hell he found ginger when they hadn't been in port for months...

[The Librarian]

Repost from Ian Xanthe:

Ian was at the table in the center of his room with his feet crossed at the ankles and propped on the tabletop as he leaned back in his chair. He concentrated intensely on the quill pen he was balancing precariously across the bridge of his nose. Above him, on the ceiling of the room, several feet of chimerical Nocnista spider perched, watching him with eight unblinking red eyes.

Samarrah’s precise voice whispered like small silver bells in his mind, “You know you are not actually accomplishing anything, yes?”

Ian frowned up at her looking passed the quill and spoke aloud, “I damn sure am, it’s a new record, three hours.” He referred to the balancing act taking place on his thin Sidhe nose.

She sighed in his mind, “Are you actually going to write anything?”

“You know I have a process!” he said loudly, the pen dropped ungracefully to the floor, followed by a resounding, “Dammit! Fine…”

The Archduke grumbled, and reached down for the pen on the floor, finally sitting up again and looking to the still-blank parchment in front of him. Above him from his chimerical familiar, he felt an amused satisfaction, which only caused him to frown more.
He begrudgingly dipped the pen into the ink well, and set it on the paper staring at it as though he expected the writing instrument to move of it’s own volition. With his free hand he reached up and massaged his temple.

“How many years has it been since you last did any semblance of paperwork? Are you sure you even remember how to fill out an official court document?” She asked.

His long Sidhe ears laid back defensively as he slowly looked up at her again continuing to speak aloud, “Like, …a lot. If you’re gonna help, then help. If you’re gonna nitpick, then You can always fuckin’ leave” he growled.

Ian continued to feel increasing amusement from her as she shifted slightly, her eight long black legs stretched in turn and resettled onto the ceiling of the room. She would have been smirking if she had lips. The Doomsayer glared at her, and then just as slowly, tore his gaze from her again, and looked to the blank parchment once more.

Several silent minutes passed before she spoke again with fading amusement, “Well what kind of document is it supposed to be?”

Ian answered, “A will edict. Phaen asked that I take care of her mothers estate for her and sort out the mess left behind before she heads back to Arcadia.”

Another long pause…

“Did you not offer to do this for her?” She asked him.

“Maybe! That’s neither here nor there, is it?” he quipped.

The Doomsayer grumbled again, returning the pen tip to the parchment, and began writing:

“To whosoever may be affected by said willful distribution of Lady Elaine Elmier Duquette ni Beaumayn’s estate-”


He was frowning again, and scribbled a line through the sentence. Ian Xanthe despised the formality of it all: the Grand Pageant of Fae Court life, document signing, and all that his position of Archduke espoused. As a Lord he had avoided paperwork, as a Baron he had pawned it off on Lords, as a Count he literally did his best to make any paperwork he was asked to do so completely inadmissible that the Queen’s he had served were forced to file it the nearest waste bin…

By the time the Doomsayer had become an Archduke, no one asked anymore.

Ian grinned a little at the last thought.

His reverie of document-dodging was interrupted by the Nocnista’s voice in his mind once more, “Why then, did you offer on this occasion?”

Ian blinked and looked up at her again, his mouth opened searching for an answer, but then closed again thoughtfully.

“I think you miss it” she added.

He looked to the parchment and wondered if she might be right. No one had asked in so long that maybe he really did miss the opportunity to be legendarily obstinate in Court matters.

Samarrah spoke with renewed amusement, feeling his every thought as his familiar, “You are still –such- a Sidhe.”

Ian Xanthe smirked finally, not just any smirk, but “the smirk” that he was so fond of displaying.

The smirk that epitomized every ounce of everything, he’d always refused to be.

He began writing with renewed inspiration for several minutes. He paused now and again only to reach to his left and lift the bottle of rum from the table to his lips.

He stopped once more, re-inked the quill, and looked up to the human-sized spider on the ceiling again,

Ian took a long pull from the rum bottle again before asking seriously, “Is there a better way to phrase ‘ get the fuck out’?”

The chimerical spider would have blinked if she had eyelids, and it was her turn to study him without answer.

She finally said in a chastising tone, to the now-grinning grump Sidhe, “I believe you have been told in the past, on –countless- occasions by those to whom you were giving paperwork that phrases like that are completely inappropriate for Court documents.”


“Inappropriate, but not inadmissible” he added quickly.

She sighed.

Ian nodded slowly as he stated, “so no, then.”

The Doomsayer went back to writing and drinking, and his grin broadened as he heard another defeated sigh in his mind from Sammarah, above. Quietly, the chimera watched from her perch. Two more hours and half a bottle more of rum passed before he stopped, and set the quill into the inkbottle.

“Done,” he said simply, and rose from his chair to walk to his nightstand. He began rummaging.

Sammarah, who had been reading along shifted in a half circle turn on the ceiling above to look down at him, “Are you really going to seal that?”

Ian paused in his rummaging long enough to say derisively, “No Sammarah, I thought I might take a few copies to the latrine and put the document I spent the last few hours writing to good use.”

He grinned as he added, “ not that it wouldn’t be the best place for most of High Court’s archives.”

He was rummaging again, with a renewed grin.

He found it finally. A seemingly innocuous and unremarkable wooden seal stamp. The stamp was scuffed, and battered, attesting to many years of use and travel. On the underside was a carved “X” – for Xanthe, atop a simple engraved spider web design. The weathered seal had been given to him by the father of the woman who would later become the Queen of the Kingdom of Takissis in the Dreaming, when Ian was first given the title of Knight. Ian had refused a more elaborate Title Seal through his later promotions in High Court, and though he had never given reason for his refusal, none pressed the issue.

The Grump studied the stamp with his bright amethyst eyes for several long minutes and his mind drifted back to those lifetimes ago, to King Takissis. The King who took in a young violet- eyed, five year old Sidhe, who had no home. An orphan who was not yet a Duke, or a Doomsayer…still just scruffy street-urchin.

Ian whispered softly to no one in particular while lost in the memory, “…when he didn’t have to.”


King Takissis was killed in battle when Ian was still only a Knight. He remembered the funeral procession; it trailed for miles and miles…

Tears filled Ian’s violet eyes while the memory played in his mind as clearly as the day on which ‘Sir’ Xanthe had been one mourner among an entire Kingdom that wept together...

But before they fell, The Archduke smiled those same tears away. His delicate Sidhe fingers curled around the remnants of all he had left of one of the greatest men he had ever known.

So was the nature of a Fae: chaotically drifting from one emotion to the next without warning, and without apology.

Ian turned to the document and whispered something that even Sammarah was not able to hear. Then he pressed the old wooden seal to the surface, and Glamour erupted around its edges against the parchment surface. He lifted the seal slowly, and the webbed impression of the Archdukes Will and Word remained in a deeply ebony ‘X’ for Xanthe. He looked to a blank sheet of parchment nearby and pressed the seal to it. Glamour flared once more and the page filled with an exact copy of its predecessor. One copy would go to Freehold in question, and another would be sent with Phaen to drop off for the High Court archives when she returned to the Dreaming.

Ian gathered one parchment, and slipped it into a small box with an unopened bottle of rum. The box would be delivered to the Freehold of her mother. He left the box and the copy for Phaen, sitting just inside her door, at the nearby Grey Manor and found his way back to the bottom floor taproom of his own home. A bar he persistently haunted, as surely as any Fae noble haunted an office.








(The Edict reads: )

~To be read by Kason Duval, of the Boggin Kith, appointed steward of the Eyerie of Pormir Felwis~


To all residents of the Eyerie of Pormir Felwis:

Captain Phaen Amber Grey ni Eiluned has left the matter of the organization and distribution of the aforementioned Eyerie, which previously belonged to her mother, to the care and judgment of Archduke Ian Xanthe.

Uh huh, I heard the collective groan of every Sidhe in room. So lets get to this:



Order the 1st:

To every house servant, groundskeeper, proprietor, or otherwise employed individual of said Freehold Estate, you are hereby fired.

I know, I know, being fired is likely the worst news you’ve heard all year, so have a drink on me (See enclosed bottle of rum.)



Order the 2nd:

The Estate of the Eyerie of Pormir Felwis including: Manor, Cottage, Stables, Property equaling 44 acres, and all the contents thereof is to be subdivided among every unemployed common man, woman, and child now sitting in what I am sure is a beautifully and richly appointed stateroom where this is being read.

To each of you, that’s likely the best news you’ve had all year, so have a drink (see previously mentioned bottle of enclosed rum.)

Welcome to the high life, that is usually shared only by that handful of Sidhe you’ve had to serve for the passed several years.

Please take this opportunity to smile sweetly to those same Sidhe who I am sure are very pissed off in the corner of the room at the moment. And if need be, please ‘firmly’ remind those Sidhe they can file a complaint with Archduke Xanthe, but are legally bound to not take any retaliatory action.



Order the 3rd:

To the Sidhe in the room, please pack you’re shit, and leave. (No, you can’t have a drink of their rum.) Get up, right now. Gather whatever personal items you brought with you to this Freehold, and then kindly get the fuck out.

Oh don’t look so shocked; you groaned earlier, you knew somthing like this was comming the moment you heard my name read.

Go home to your mommy or daddy’s Freehold for a while, complain, bitch, and generally be spoiled bastards on their time, and on their land.



Order the 4th:

In the matter of one moderate range balefire, at the heart of the Eyerie of Pormir Felwis:

The balefire is hereby officially awarded to Kason Duval, of the Boggin Kith.

Who likely just dropped this parchment, because he’s reading this out loud to all of you and had no idea that was coming. So give him a minute, and a shot of rum. You are all probably now worried about your friend here being awarded the fire of a noble Sidhe, as any Sidhe bearing a title could contest it. Which brings us to-



Order the 5th:

The Title of Ladyship of the former mistress of the the Eyerie of Pormir Felwis of one:

Lady Elaine Elmier Duquette ni Beaumayn, ( now very dead in the cold, cold ground.)

is converted to a Lordship, and awarded to:

‘Lord’ Kason Duval of the Boggin Kith, appointed lordship by the Authority of Archduke Ian Xanthe of the Freehold of Widow’s Web.



Order the 6th:

(To likely be read by one of the other now independently wealthy commoners still in the room.)

Please pick the unconscious Lord Duval up off the floor, and have a wonderful day.

Let the following be considered optional, unless you are a Sidhe still in the room and listening to this reading, in which case, you shouldn't still be here: Go. Pack. Your. Shit.


Suggestion the 1st:

Take a few days to breathe, and move out of the various servants’ quarters in and around the estate house, and into your own room. Figure out what it’s all worth, and sell half of the gaudy décor, completely impractical accoutrements, and precious jewel encrusted ass warmers. (That is very likely laying around at the whim of every noble Sidhe who has ever lived there.)

Bump a little something to Phaen Grey (she is responsible for all this), then divide the rest of the money among all of you equally.

Keep the manor house, live there, and in a few more days, sign the property itself to the newly appointed Lord Duval, so all of you are protected under a legally appointed noble title.



Suggestion the 2nd:

Have a party, get drunk, revel…you’ll never have to worry about food for your families, shelter, finances, or servitor again.



Unapologetically,

Archduke Ian Xanthe ap whatever
Freehold of Widows Web, c/o The Freehold of Roses

Source: freeholdofroses.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=pubstory&action=display&thread=910