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Aug. 14th, 2021 08:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sigmalephgot a little bit written for this project that i've decided to attack from another angle, so i'm not going to continue this fragment. posting it under a cut cause why not
In a room deep inside the Asir palace in the city of Marliz, a woman and a man sat in front of a table covered in paper, quills, and ink. The room was lit by mage-light, since no windows opened to it. It was small, unassuming, and yet a fortune in scrolls and books covered its walls. Not in the value of the material, but in the knowledge contained in them.
“Teben Iqeth,” Asir Layit said.
“Has he proposed to you, yet?” her spymaster replied, frowning. He looked older than his mistress, and most knew him by the name Huras. He was not born with that name.
“He has not. He has made no move at all to court me, in fact.”
“How dare he insult your magnificence,” Huras said. “Shall I have him beaten?”
Layit smiled. “Find out why. I would not think he would support his cousin on his bid.”
“No, you’re right,” he replied, rifling through a small stack of papers. “He wouldn’t. Something is going on that we don’t know.”
Implicit in that was both an admission of failure and a recognition of opportunity. A thread that could be followed to unravel even more of the fabric that was the nobility of Marliz. Layit did not need to tell him what methods to use or what agents to tap; her spymaster knew his craft.
“Who else?” he asked finally.
“Anything new on Engir? I am meeting Lese for tea today”
“You were right about the lover. She’s a merchant’s daughter, they met at the academy. Name is... “ he paused to check his papers. “Yeanna.”
“Father is anyone of consequence?”
“We’ve had a deal or two with him, nothing much.” He passed her a few fragments copied from an accounts book.
The Asir had “a deal or two” with everyone in the city. As the wealthiest family in Marliz, their business interests were far reaching.
“Thank you, Huras.” Layit rose, careful not to upset the contents of the table. “This could be useful.”
“I live to serve my lady.”
“That you do, dearest.” She smiled with affection.
Layit left the cramped room and walked briskly through the hallways of her palace. Next on her schedule was a brief visit with her mages, so she directed her steps downstairs, underground.
The mages in the employ of the Asir family had complained for three generations that their Lords expected them to work in underground laboratories rather than the large, sunlit studies they had come to expect. Of course Layit had also assigned them rooms more proper to their station elsewhere in the palace, and they were free to conduct their more theoretical research there, but she and her predecessors had been insistent that all experimental work be conducted in the safety of the subterranean levels. The number of fires started alone justified the policy, in her view.
The main laboratory was a massive chamber, with various smaller rooms to the side where either privacy or isolation was required, dominated by two large structures on opposite sides of the room. On one side, the massive furnace connected to the engines that guaranteed the power independence of the Asir, keeping every mage-device in the palace running as well the instruments used by the mages themselves. The more junior of them were assigned on rotation to regularly check and maintain the device, an unpopular but necessary task.
Opposite the furnace, there was the gigantic cold chamber that preserved the dead bodies of various animals as well as the samples extracted from them. Distasteful work as well, but one mages with the relevant specialties expected and were accustomed to. A similar yet much smaller device was near the kitchens, where meat meant to be consumed was kept. A previous Lord Asir had tried to argue the second refrigeration chamber was unnecessary, but the risks of cross-contamination had been too great to ignore.
Asir Hennoh, a distant cousin of the main Asir branch, was the head mage of the family. He was a skilled scholar and perfectly competent mage, though his position owed equally to his family name, leaving him always with a certain touch of defensiveness around the other senior mages. As if he expected Layit to suddenly get the notion in her head to replace him with one of them, which she had no intention of doing any time soon. Her position as Lady Asir was too fresh to risk every last one of her relatives to start wondering if they’d be the next to be considered useless and replaced with an upjumped commoner. Besides, he was among the least useless of the lot.
“My lady! You honour us with your presence,” Hennoh said while bowing.
“Good to see you, cousin.” Layit nodded. “Please, don’t let me interrupt your work.”
Of course Hennoh knew she was coming, and had no work to interrupt. He guided her around the workstations, discussing the progress in the senior mages’ projects since she has last visited. For the most part, things were proceeding as expected, though that meant there was little to report.
“...and Wisdom Shenal has been working at the hospital most of this month, so I’m afraid his research progress is less than-”
“Shenal’s talent as a healer has few equals. While his research is a subject of great importance,” Layit lied. It was a complete dead end, in fact, not that she could tell him that, “his medical service brings great honour to himself and to the Asir. I would not dream of distracting him from it.”
“I see, my lady. I will let him know your thoughts on this.”
“Please do. I have another matter, which we might best discuss in your office, cousin dear.”
Hennoh’s office was one of the private rooms off the main chamber. While his personal study was in the upper floors, administrative matters were often best handled next to the laboratory where everyone spent most of their time. Layit sat down and refused Hennoh’s offer of a drink.
“We have a commission from the Jeweller’s Guild,” she stated.
“What for?”
“They seem to have noticed an unusual flood of amethysts in the market, which they suspect of being the work of transmuters.”
“Oh. Do they-”
“Suspect us? Not in the least, more fools them. They want our mages to devise a spell that can tell apart a natural amethyst from these ‘cheap imitations’, you see.”
Hennoh almost laughed. “Of course. Urush should be free soon.”
“If she’s not, tell her to interrupt her current project, this has priority,” Layit said. “She has the theory, anyway, all that’s left is adapting it into something the jewellers can use.”
Wisdom Urush, after all, had been the one to make the gems in the first place. Layit had instructed her they should be done in various degrees of quality, and had been very careful to whom she distributed which kind.
“The lowest grade only, for now,” she continued. “I’ll let you know when she should progress to ‘discovering’ the next refinement of the method”
“Certainly. Did they give us a sample, or…”
“Oh, yes, I’ll have them sent to you. Can’t be too obvious about it.” Layit headed towards the door. “That’s all for now, Hennoh. Make our family proud.”
“Always, my beloved cousin.”
After meeting with the mages, Layit often itched to head to her own private laboratory and work on her research; today was no exception. She resisted the urge, though, since she would have hardly any time to get some proper work done before she needed to get ready for her social appointments. The duties of her station were an inevitable conflict with having time to pursue magical projects, and it would likely never stop rankling her. But she’d known it’d be this way going in, and still made her choices.
So, instead, she stopped briefly by the library and distracted herself talking with one of the librarians about a volume on natural philosophy she intended to acquire. It was one of the old Imperial texts, an anonymous writer collecting a series of debates between three different philosophers. She’d seen references to it in other works but had never managed to find a copy until now. It was incomplete, unfortunately, but a good three quarters of the material were there and she had other leads she meant to chase to get the remainder. Expensive, naturally, but she might manage to recoup her losses trading copies to the academies. Or not; expanding the Asir library was reward enough.
She saw in passing one of her scholars, a young man she’d begun sponsoring recently, but he seemed intimidated and she didn’t try to engage him in conversation. From what she knew of his character, he’d probably panic if spoken to by a noble unexpectedly, even his patroness. Perhaps especially his patroness.
Layit finished her conversation with the librarian and decided a bath was called for before meeting with the Engir. She expected the conversation to be unpleasant and would take what relaxation she could get. She luxuriated in her private bathroom for a time, thinking through approaches and recalling all the intelligence she’d gone over with the last few days with Huras.
Eventually, and after needing to reheat the water at least once, she gave up, summoned her one of her attendants, and got dressed. Her hair was braided with silver thread and held with a pin depicting some unfamiliar Western bird, and she chose a deep blue tunic, cinched around the waist by a thin belt. A sapphire-studded necklace and a full set of rank bracelets, two on her left arm and three on the right, completed the look.
After stepping out of the palace into the heat of the afternoon, Layit waited for the privacy of her closed carriage before discreetly casting a spell to cool herself. Two of the bracelets were in fact inscribed with a circuit that facilitated temperature control spells; the dual-use design allowing them to be used in both summer and winter was a clever piece of work, if she did say so herself. Would never sell among the nobility, of course, nobody would admit they can’t afford two different sets of jewellery, but there was likely a market in the merchant class. She’d have to figure out how to leak the idea to one of her mages and let them take credit for it. After all, publicly, Asir Layit was no mage.
The event at the Engir residence was reasonably small—a dozen people, between Lese himself, his sisters, a handful of cousins and some of his similarly aged friends from allied families. Absent were his father, Lord Engir, as well his older brother, the heir, though of course their support was implicit in being able to host at the palace at all.
The even gender split among those attending would normally indicate an event meant to introduce young nobles to each other for potential marriages, and to some extent that was the case, but only one such coupling was the intended goal of the event.
In a room deep inside the Asir palace in the city of Marliz, a woman and a man sat in front of a table covered in paper, quills, and ink. The room was lit by mage-light, since no windows opened to it. It was small, unassuming, and yet a fortune in scrolls and books covered its walls. Not in the value of the material, but in the knowledge contained in them.
“Teben Iqeth,” Asir Layit said.
“Has he proposed to you, yet?” her spymaster replied, frowning. He looked older than his mistress, and most knew him by the name Huras. He was not born with that name.
“He has not. He has made no move at all to court me, in fact.”
“How dare he insult your magnificence,” Huras said. “Shall I have him beaten?”
Layit smiled. “Find out why. I would not think he would support his cousin on his bid.”
“No, you’re right,” he replied, rifling through a small stack of papers. “He wouldn’t. Something is going on that we don’t know.”
Implicit in that was both an admission of failure and a recognition of opportunity. A thread that could be followed to unravel even more of the fabric that was the nobility of Marliz. Layit did not need to tell him what methods to use or what agents to tap; her spymaster knew his craft.
“Who else?” he asked finally.
“Anything new on Engir? I am meeting Lese for tea today”
“You were right about the lover. She’s a merchant’s daughter, they met at the academy. Name is... “ he paused to check his papers. “Yeanna.”
“Father is anyone of consequence?”
“We’ve had a deal or two with him, nothing much.” He passed her a few fragments copied from an accounts book.
The Asir had “a deal or two” with everyone in the city. As the wealthiest family in Marliz, their business interests were far reaching.
“Thank you, Huras.” Layit rose, careful not to upset the contents of the table. “This could be useful.”
“I live to serve my lady.”
“That you do, dearest.” She smiled with affection.
Layit left the cramped room and walked briskly through the hallways of her palace. Next on her schedule was a brief visit with her mages, so she directed her steps downstairs, underground.
The mages in the employ of the Asir family had complained for three generations that their Lords expected them to work in underground laboratories rather than the large, sunlit studies they had come to expect. Of course Layit had also assigned them rooms more proper to their station elsewhere in the palace, and they were free to conduct their more theoretical research there, but she and her predecessors had been insistent that all experimental work be conducted in the safety of the subterranean levels. The number of fires started alone justified the policy, in her view.
The main laboratory was a massive chamber, with various smaller rooms to the side where either privacy or isolation was required, dominated by two large structures on opposite sides of the room. On one side, the massive furnace connected to the engines that guaranteed the power independence of the Asir, keeping every mage-device in the palace running as well the instruments used by the mages themselves. The more junior of them were assigned on rotation to regularly check and maintain the device, an unpopular but necessary task.
Opposite the furnace, there was the gigantic cold chamber that preserved the dead bodies of various animals as well as the samples extracted from them. Distasteful work as well, but one mages with the relevant specialties expected and were accustomed to. A similar yet much smaller device was near the kitchens, where meat meant to be consumed was kept. A previous Lord Asir had tried to argue the second refrigeration chamber was unnecessary, but the risks of cross-contamination had been too great to ignore.
Asir Hennoh, a distant cousin of the main Asir branch, was the head mage of the family. He was a skilled scholar and perfectly competent mage, though his position owed equally to his family name, leaving him always with a certain touch of defensiveness around the other senior mages. As if he expected Layit to suddenly get the notion in her head to replace him with one of them, which she had no intention of doing any time soon. Her position as Lady Asir was too fresh to risk every last one of her relatives to start wondering if they’d be the next to be considered useless and replaced with an upjumped commoner. Besides, he was among the least useless of the lot.
“My lady! You honour us with your presence,” Hennoh said while bowing.
“Good to see you, cousin.” Layit nodded. “Please, don’t let me interrupt your work.”
Of course Hennoh knew she was coming, and had no work to interrupt. He guided her around the workstations, discussing the progress in the senior mages’ projects since she has last visited. For the most part, things were proceeding as expected, though that meant there was little to report.
“...and Wisdom Shenal has been working at the hospital most of this month, so I’m afraid his research progress is less than-”
“Shenal’s talent as a healer has few equals. While his research is a subject of great importance,” Layit lied. It was a complete dead end, in fact, not that she could tell him that, “his medical service brings great honour to himself and to the Asir. I would not dream of distracting him from it.”
“I see, my lady. I will let him know your thoughts on this.”
“Please do. I have another matter, which we might best discuss in your office, cousin dear.”
Hennoh’s office was one of the private rooms off the main chamber. While his personal study was in the upper floors, administrative matters were often best handled next to the laboratory where everyone spent most of their time. Layit sat down and refused Hennoh’s offer of a drink.
“We have a commission from the Jeweller’s Guild,” she stated.
“What for?”
“They seem to have noticed an unusual flood of amethysts in the market, which they suspect of being the work of transmuters.”
“Oh. Do they-”
“Suspect us? Not in the least, more fools them. They want our mages to devise a spell that can tell apart a natural amethyst from these ‘cheap imitations’, you see.”
Hennoh almost laughed. “Of course. Urush should be free soon.”
“If she’s not, tell her to interrupt her current project, this has priority,” Layit said. “She has the theory, anyway, all that’s left is adapting it into something the jewellers can use.”
Wisdom Urush, after all, had been the one to make the gems in the first place. Layit had instructed her they should be done in various degrees of quality, and had been very careful to whom she distributed which kind.
“The lowest grade only, for now,” she continued. “I’ll let you know when she should progress to ‘discovering’ the next refinement of the method”
“Certainly. Did they give us a sample, or…”
“Oh, yes, I’ll have them sent to you. Can’t be too obvious about it.” Layit headed towards the door. “That’s all for now, Hennoh. Make our family proud.”
“Always, my beloved cousin.”
After meeting with the mages, Layit often itched to head to her own private laboratory and work on her research; today was no exception. She resisted the urge, though, since she would have hardly any time to get some proper work done before she needed to get ready for her social appointments. The duties of her station were an inevitable conflict with having time to pursue magical projects, and it would likely never stop rankling her. But she’d known it’d be this way going in, and still made her choices.
So, instead, she stopped briefly by the library and distracted herself talking with one of the librarians about a volume on natural philosophy she intended to acquire. It was one of the old Imperial texts, an anonymous writer collecting a series of debates between three different philosophers. She’d seen references to it in other works but had never managed to find a copy until now. It was incomplete, unfortunately, but a good three quarters of the material were there and she had other leads she meant to chase to get the remainder. Expensive, naturally, but she might manage to recoup her losses trading copies to the academies. Or not; expanding the Asir library was reward enough.
She saw in passing one of her scholars, a young man she’d begun sponsoring recently, but he seemed intimidated and she didn’t try to engage him in conversation. From what she knew of his character, he’d probably panic if spoken to by a noble unexpectedly, even his patroness. Perhaps especially his patroness.
Layit finished her conversation with the librarian and decided a bath was called for before meeting with the Engir. She expected the conversation to be unpleasant and would take what relaxation she could get. She luxuriated in her private bathroom for a time, thinking through approaches and recalling all the intelligence she’d gone over with the last few days with Huras.
Eventually, and after needing to reheat the water at least once, she gave up, summoned her one of her attendants, and got dressed. Her hair was braided with silver thread and held with a pin depicting some unfamiliar Western bird, and she chose a deep blue tunic, cinched around the waist by a thin belt. A sapphire-studded necklace and a full set of rank bracelets, two on her left arm and three on the right, completed the look.
After stepping out of the palace into the heat of the afternoon, Layit waited for the privacy of her closed carriage before discreetly casting a spell to cool herself. Two of the bracelets were in fact inscribed with a circuit that facilitated temperature control spells; the dual-use design allowing them to be used in both summer and winter was a clever piece of work, if she did say so herself. Would never sell among the nobility, of course, nobody would admit they can’t afford two different sets of jewellery, but there was likely a market in the merchant class. She’d have to figure out how to leak the idea to one of her mages and let them take credit for it. After all, publicly, Asir Layit was no mage.
The event at the Engir residence was reasonably small—a dozen people, between Lese himself, his sisters, a handful of cousins and some of his similarly aged friends from allied families. Absent were his father, Lord Engir, as well his older brother, the heir, though of course their support was implicit in being able to host at the palace at all.
The even gender split among those attending would normally indicate an event meant to introduce young nobles to each other for potential marriages, and to some extent that was the case, but only one such coupling was the intended goal of the event.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-15 03:34 am (UTC)