Solo Preliminary Discussions

[Alses]

Timestamp: 14th Day of Summer, 515 A.V.
Location: The Radiant Tower

“And if you’d just care to initial these proposals, your grace, I can see them passed out to the relevant departments before the Dusk Rest.”

That was Mercadier, staid and dependable, habitually smoothing his slickly-pomaded hair back with a practiced movement, his delicate little glasses flashing in the abundant light which poured into the palatial office.

Papers. Always papers, whispering mounds of them bound in white ribbon and dripping golden seals. Information about this and that, about who had done what and with whom, and sometimes even the barest inklings of why, the silver thread of truth that was always so maddeningly hard to pin down.

Government, it seemed, ran on paper – everything had to be noted down. At least, in the glitteringly ordered world of Mercadier and his ilk, anyway,, the bureaucrats who were the innumerable little cogs in the machine that saw the barque of state continuing on an even keel and a steady course.

Alses’ own experiences of governing and government figures had showed her that, in many ways, the more important stuff was often handled – at least initially – more informally. It was words, often shared over tea and cake, or a sumptuous dinner and drinks, a few whispered comments at a box in the Opera, or else in the bar during the interval, that held the true weight.

It was food for thought; Alses was beginning, however dimly, to see why Silver was subtly encouraging the employment of a dedicated cook, to provide for not-political-at-all dinners and lunches and – why not? – the occasional picnic.

With a shake of her head, she resolutely turned her attention back to the papers passing beneath her quill even as Mercadier shimmered out again, off to do his own part in keeping Magic afloat in the City of Stars for another day, no doubt. That, or to collect more work for her.

‘Whereas it is to be understood that when the party of the third part (see Section 4.1, Subsection 6C) is in indirect contravention of the Regulation of Magic Act (Amended) 514 A.V., in conjunction with a party of the first or second part that is in direct contravention of the aforesaid Act, it is the considered opinion of the Seiza judiciary that, contingent upon sufficient provision of evidence via the Shinya or other acceptable sources (consult Law, Lore and Lhavit, Vol. IV [Fourth Edition, 510 A.V.]), the judge and presiding officer of the court may allow a prima facie case to be pursued at the discretion of the prosecution as an ancillary to the primary event.

Furthermore, it is to be held that in prosecution of parties of a third part in knowing but indirect contravention of the Regulation of Magic Act (Amended), or those held beyond reasonable doubt to be in knowing but indirect contravention of the Regulation of Magic Act (Amended), penalties and regulations of the party’s powers, titles, possessions and appurtenances must necessarily be adjusted to account for the remove from the primary breach which-’

Enough! Enough. Thrusting herself back with considerable force, Alses took herself away from the mind-numbing acres of words that twisted and danced in and out of one another, a gleeful lexical labyrinth that the lawyers seemed to love. It was obfuscation, as far as she was concerned, obscuring the issue and the silver thread of truth in acres of pompous and convoluted verbiage. And as a result, it took forever and a day to painstakingly wade through.

Shaking her head, the resplendent Councillor Radiant made her way out from behind her desk and towards the broad sweep of windows which gazed out over the city – reduced to a toy by the height – and beyond. She had begun in the early morning, the sky a brilliant powder-blue, but now it burned purple and red as the sun began to sink, its burnished disk rippling in the cloud-streaked heavens. Alses’ grand office was afire with the heavy, slow light of the afternoon, great pools of it shimmering in the windows and racing across the polished floor to consume furniture and papers.

The click of the doors opening – almost soundlessly, but in this place, with only the ticking of a gilt clock over the unlit fireplace to disturb the quiet, almost wasn’t enough – caused Alses to turn, along with the whispering susurrus of a pearly aura that drifted along the edges of her senses, cool and calm and soothing.

Mercadier put his head round the doors once more, swiftly followed by the rest of his body, immaculately suited and booted as always, hair slicked back with his habitual jasmine pomade and the continual nervous action of his hands.

“My apologies for the interruption, your grace, but if you depart in the next few chimes you should be able to make the Twilight Tower for your meeting with His Excellency.” A brief pause, as he stepped fully into the room, smoothing back his hair as he did so, as though fearing that the pomade had lost its efficacy and that some blonde strand had strayed from its ordained place.

“Have you finished your papers for today?” he asked delicately; his mistress was occasionally struck by bouts of lassitude, or a maniacal work ethic, in about equal measure.

“Hmm?” Alses turned from her contemplation of infinity, missing the cool pressure of the glass on her forehead already. “Oh, yes, yes.” She flapped an absent hand at her mahogany-and-brass out-tray, piled high with papers in an ordered stack, dripping ribbons and seals. “All apart from the ridiculous one from the Seiza about ancillary cases in the application of the Third Law. We’re up to codicil four there, if that’s any solace to you.” She sighed, heavily.

“It would be so much easier if they provided a summary in plain Common,” Alses complained. “At this point, we’d even take a summary sheet written in Nader-Canoch. Before I began this job, we never imagined that such convolution was possible with the language.”

Mercadier, most unusually, paused, and there was an unusual little shimmying ripple dancing through his aura. Alses vaguely recognized that particular glittering tic – the man was constructing something in his head, turning it around and around to try and fit it into the available not-going-spare space in Alses’ head.

She sighed, heavily. “Out with it, Mercadier. We won’t tear your head off.”

A diffident cough. “The Seiza do actually provide a one-page summary to their papers, your grace, but-”

He got no further; an irate and surprised “What?” burst forth from Alses’ lips. “You mean we could have just read that instead of slogging for two bells through acres of convoluted words? Where in the name of Syna’s flaming knickers is it, then?”

An odd, waxy expression settled onto Mercadier’s normally urbane and polished features – he was trying not to laugh. He cleared his throat a few times and studiously avoided looking at her whilst he got himself back under control, commendably quickly, all things considered.

“But,” he continued, voice purposefully pitched and tuned to ‘soothing’, “I’ve taken the liberty of removing them from the papers before they come to you. A good grounding in the style of the Seiza – and other groups as well – might well be vital one day. And besides, your grace, not everything in an eighty-page report will fit onto one side of paper. I’m sure you see the implications?”

[Alses]

Alses sagged, some of the fire leaving her. “Hmm. Yes. Yes, we suppose so. It’s just – don’t we have staff checking these things before they come to me?”

“Indeed we do, m’lady, and whilst your oversight of the minutiae of these papers might not be, ah, critical now, you may be asked in the future to review a document and present an opinion at very short notice, and without the benefit of a covering page.” He waved a hand airily, as if to capture his thoughts.

“If, for example, the Day Lady wanted your opinion on a Seiza ruling and handed you the case document, it perhaps wouldn’t look the best if you weren’t able to read and understand it?”

Alses scowled, mostly at herself. Mercadier, as usual, made some excellent points, and ones that she couldn’t easily refute, either. “Yes, yes, you’ve made your point. Eloquently as always,” she added, slightly grudgingly. “Put it in one of the boxes you’re sending me home with and we’ll try and look at it this evening, after Lord Twilight’s little meeting.”

A fluid bow, exquisite muscles firing in a complex pattern to bend her indispensable assistant and then straighten him up again with perfect poise, not a hair out of place nor a crease marring his soberly immaculate clothes. Alses wondered, fleetingly, what he might be like outside of the office, perhaps on a festival day where he might let his hair down – metaphorically speaking; he seemed rather attached to his pomade, after all.

“Very good, your grace,” he murmured, already gliding across the floor towards her desk and the piles of paper there, efficiently ordering them and tagging them with a practised hand for the attention of the various minions and underlings who toiled away beyond the doors of Alses’ office.

“If you leave now, your grace, you will be politely punctual,” he reminded her quietly, after a chime or two, a gentle nudge in the right direction.

Alses, for her part, left with alacrity.


A


It was always pleasant to walk through Lhavit of an afternoon, with the sinking sun burnishing the skyglass spires and marble pillars of the city of dreams. It had always, in some indefinable sense, felt familiar to Alses, even when she had been a newcomer, a head-in-the-heavens mourning Ethaefal with hardly a care for the mundane mortal world she found herself in, and long association had only deepened and enriched that feeling.

She walked with a maternally proprietorial air, drinking in the atmosphere of her beloved city as she went, regarding with a ready smile and a benevolent twinkle in her eye the shapely trees, the ordered flowerbeds, the fountains, the sudden secret courtyards and the bustle of citizens everywhere going about their daily business.

All beautiful, all safe, all ordered, thanks to Lhavit’s government and the steady presence at the helm of the Ethaefal. Five hundred years and counting saw a lot of crises come and go; their experience in statecraft was almost nonpareil.

She was playing a herculean game of catch-up, in comparison, scrambling and scrabbling through the coils of politics and diplomacy, painstakingly learning the lessons that Talora and Aysel had learned so long ago that no-one even remembered their gaffes and blunders.

A wry little smile touched her lips as her footsteps – and those of her shadows – touched the coruscating arc of skyglass that was the bridge from Tenten to Sartu, her feet taking her swiftly and surely towards the finger of purple light that was the Twilight Tower without any conscious input from her brain. Those seasons spent carrying messages and those damned boxes had paid off; her knowledge of the city and its pathways was superb.

‘Perhaps one day I shall be in their position,’ she mused idly as she walked. ‘The wise statesman, unflappable and with an answer to every crisis and conundrum set me.’ That day, needless to say, was a very long way off indeed.

Sartu was a pleasant peak, all told – Alses could spot her own home from its slopes, gazing back towards Tenten – and its centrepiece was rather more welcoming, in her estimation. The Twilight Tower – or Towers, rather, given it was a double spire soaring up into the heavens – glowed serenely beside its little lake. A colossal structure, to be sure, dwarfing her own abode, it was nonetheless a welcome sight. Alses’ own internal clock, synchronised absolutely to the sun, told her she was a few chimes early, which was just as she liked it.

Punctuality, she remembered reading somewhere once, was the politeness of princes.

She’d had to look up what a prince was, monarchy having fallen by the wayside in the chaos of the Valterrian, but had decided it was a saying with a worthy goal behind it, and consequently always strove to be perfectly punctual, rather than fashionably late.

After all, she hated it when people were late; how could she expect people to be courteously on time if she herself was late?

The guards at the gate recognized her and let her pass without comment, Alses’ Shinya shadows exchanging a significant nod with them and peeling off, surrendering her care to the Twilights – for as long as she was on their premises, anyway.

Once across the threshold, Alses took a deep breath, savouring the atmosphere of the Tower, the unusual scents that assailed her sensitive nose and the richer, deeper and infinitely more interesting bouquet that came from her auristics, spreading out like a breaking wave to feed secrets and information back to her.

[Alses]

In the swirling charivari of an aurist's impression of the world, a tight-whorled knot of energy churned and boiled against the serene tide as one of the innumerable servants of the Twilight Tower glided smoothly across the marbled foyer of that grand institution.

This one, she knew – at least by reputation, and the taste of her aura on Lord Twilight. This, then, could only be Frost, a woman with a paleness that almost rivalled a Konti, but built to an altogether more hearty, muscular plan than the sea-going ladies of the Isle of Mura.

A Kelvic, too: that peculiar glitter and shimmy, that impression of a too-intelligent animal combined with the sparkling whorl of magic in her core marked her as one of the animal race, even more than the easy, predatory sashay across the acres of marble floor and the quickness of her gaze, sizing up Alses as though watching a gazelle on the savannah, weighing up whether it would be worth the effort to run her down.

Alses, for her part, met that appraising look with the armour of the celestial Ethaefal, the absolute certainty of divinity and therefore someone far higher on the metaphysical food chain than a mere mortal, flicker-life Kelvic.

The brief moment of mutual assessment passed in a single breath, Frost's mouth curving upwards into a polite smile that almost coincidentally bared too-long, too-sharp teeth, sparkling white and viciously pointed. The gnashers – and never had that word been used more appropriately – of an apex carnivore.

“Good afternoon, your grace,” she murmured, a low, almost purring rumble emanating from deep in her chest as she rolled her r's with relish. Eye contact was not broken, that calculating assessment continued, but in the background now, not as the sole focus.

“Good afternoon, Miss Frost?” Alses let her voice rise at the end, turning it into a question for the sake of formality. She, equally, did not break contact with the slitted, catlike pupils that were fixed on her face. After a tick, she added: “I trust we're not late for His Excellency?”

The Kelvic's heels clicked on the floor as she came to a stop, perhaps slightly too close for comfort – although whether that was a conscious decision to unnerve Alses or simply a result of being a Kelvic, and therefore having different rules in respect to decorum and personal space, she didn't know and didn't care to expend the precious djed to find out.

“Politely early, in point of fact, your grace.” A sharp jerk of her head, and the two of them were powering across the floor towards the usually-locked doors that lead into the private Tower that was the exclusive domain of House Twilight itself.

As a matter of honour, Alses lengthened her stride to keep up with the Kelvic, her muscles shifting and bunching seamlessly beneath her glimmering skin, robes swirling gently in the wake. A House Guard stood aside as they approached; Frost reached down to her waist and the clanking silver chatelaine secured there, long fingers unerringly selecting a key that clicked smoothly in the lock.


A


House Twilight's private tower was restrained, but the sort of restraint that nonetheless whispered wealth from every facet. The rooms might have been quite bare, by the standards of someone used to the baroque magnificence of Elysium Hall, but they were large and airy. What decoration as did exist was exquisite, the pale blankness of the walls only serving to draw the eye like a magnet to them, and everything that did exist within those walls – the chairs and the occasional painting, the rugs and carpets strewn over the floors – were of the very highest quality.

No expense had been spared – but then, what else should one expect from one of the richest families in the city?

Altelo Twilight was near the top of the Tower, in a small room whose western wall was almost entirely taken up by a vast window that gazed out over the city, the glass so clear and blemish-free that Alses blinked for a moment, unsure as to whether it even existed at all. A faint hum of magic ran through it, the explanation for both its size and clarity – but that wasn't Alses' main focus, oh no: Lord Twilight had to receive the bulk of her attention.

His Excellency wasn't an imposing man, at least, not physically. Slender, with warm chocolate-brown eyes and a pointed face, he looked more like what he was – a prominent citydweller and politician, head of his House – than a soldier or anything else where physique really mattered.

That wasn't to say he wasn't dangerous, though – Lord Twilight was an exceptionally talented Morpher – and it showed, in the slight blurring of his features as they changed constantly, infinitesimally. He had remarkable control over his form, it was true, but every Master Morpher had a certain amount of...fluidity. Added to his magical might there was his voice, his talent for rhetoric and leadership and – not least, his helming of the Twilight Tower and the vast fortune available to him as scion and patriarch of that House.

Yes, a very dangerous opponent – if opponent he were to become, anyway. Alses still wasn't entirely sure about the man; he certainly wasn't in the 'foes' camp, unlike Lady Dawn, but she was a little wary of putting him in the 'allies' corner, with Lord Dusk, Chiona and Lheili. Somewhere in between, perhaps.

He looked up as they entered, closing a book with a snap as a small smile curved his lips upward. “Ah, welcome, your grace. Thank you for delivering her, Frost.” The dismissal was very subtle, but Frost was Altelo's bondmate; she picked up on it instantly and – with a sharp glare at Alses, a pointed suggestion that if she tried anything, lion claws and jaws would rend her immortal flesh – withdrew, the door clicking closed behind her.

In the silence, a clock's metronome tick sounded quite loud.

[Alses]

“Come and have a seat, your grace,” he urged, gesturing at an overstuffed armchair – the twin of his own, in point of fact, near the great window that gazed out at the spires of Lhavit, lit by the afternoon sun and glittering like the biggest diamond imaginable.

She joined him obediently, spreading her robes out and getting comfortable in the chair that half-faced Lord Twilight and half looked out at the glorious vista.

“Beautiful, isn't it?” he observed quietly. “This is one of my favourite rooms in the whole Tower.”

“We can see why,” Alses murmured, eyes gazing out across the city and beyond – although doubtless, Altelo could see much further than her, his morphing turning his eyes into a hawk's, for instance, forever modifying his senses and form to adapt to a changing situation or even just his whims and desires.

Much like her own auristics, settled across the pair of them like a comfortable mantle, mapping the room and the ever-changing radiation from Altelo Twilight.

A comfortable silence reigned for a few chimes, before the Twilight patriarch shifted in his seat, his aura flickering into a more focused, more alert state, silver-blue attention leavened with the scintillating glitter of the eternal changes that the djed squirrelcaging around inside his frame effected from one tick to the next.

“Are you well, Alses?” he asked, almost idly. “It's nice to see you, of course it is, but you don't ask for these little meetings unless you have something you wanted to discuss. I daresay you're making the rounds?”

Alses let a smile curve up half her face, a wry tug of muscles at being seen through so easily. Not that she'd been trying to hide it, of course. “Not too bad, Altelo. It's summer; how could any Synaborn be unhappy in this most glorious of seasons? Long bells under Her warm and giving light, wonderful heat, and of course nice and short nights – paradise, we tell you! Or as near as we can come to it on Mizahar, anyway,” she added, a shadow flitting across her face.

“You're right, of course – we didn't make the trek to your beautiful Tower for a social call, as pleasant as that might have been. I wanted to sound you out about something, and to find out if you have any concerns or problems we should perhaps be aware of?”

Altelo nodded politely, reaching out – without looking – towards a cup on a nearby table, his arm flickering into a much longer, more prehensile tentacled affair that wrapped around the fine bone-china and brought it close in the blink of an eye, nary a drop spilt and so quick in the transitions between normal arm, tentacled grasper and normality again that anyone less certain of their magic and their eyes would surely have written it off as a trick of the light.

Lord Twilight noticed her look, and smiled. “Thought any more about our offer?” he asked, voice silky-smooth.

Alses pulled a face, accurately conveying with the contraction and relaxation of a few muscles a whole host of information: hunger for knowledge, chagrin and no small amount of frustration being the main components, leavened with a certain lingering gratitude.

“I'd love to take you up on your offer, you know that, but...Lady Dawn would vent her spleen in no uncertain terms if we started to learn from you. She'd say we were favouring your Tower.”

Altelo smiled warmly, eyes glittering. “Sometimes you have to step on a few toes to get something worthwhile done, Alses. You yourself mentioned how much of an asset it would be, to know how our discipline really worked.”

“Really,” he continued, in the same light and conversational tone – although his aura darkened, tinging towards burgundy acquisitiveness and a brandywine ripple of smug triumph - “I think I shall soon have to insist you take instruction, if only because the magics of the Towers are fundamental to the city, and we can't have a Councillor Radiant who doesn't understand them.” An elegant shrug, a relaxation back into the plushly yielding armchair.

“After all, your grace, you are intimately acquainted with the Dusk Tower's specialty, are you not? Something of an advantage to them, in cases where auristics is key.” Dark eyes glittered at her, and Alses knew she had no real escape. Lord Twilight was quite right; there was an advantage – in fact, there were many advantages – to having at least a basic grasp of the three most widespread magics in the city, those whose practitioners had raised up great Houses when they helped to build the city, and whose descendants were movers and shakers in the Diamond.

And Alses had never really been one to turn away knowledge, howsoever presented.

“We'll try and smoothe things over with Lady Dawn,” she settled on, in the end. “But that does rather neatly bring us to the issue I wanted to discuss with you, as it happens.”

Altelo Twilight leaned forwards in his chair, fully engaged, now, every fibre of a suddenly hawkish, predatory being focused on her and her words.

“You speak of instruction, of teaching me Morphing – and of the other Towers teaching me their own particular specialties, and that's a worthwhile thing, I quite agree with you there – quite aside from it being useful, politically speaking, I'm a sorceress. I'd never turn down information; it's not in the blood.” Altelo smiled at that; there, at least, they were kindred spirits.

“We myself were taught by the Dusk Tower, originally, as I'm sure you know. I wouldn't be where I am today without that opportunity to get an education in my favoured discipline – but we note that the Towers have withdrawn their expert instruction from the general population.”

Most unusually, Altelo looked away. “Ye-es,” he said, heavily and at length. “We all have.”

[Alses]

“I think I see where this is going, Alses,” he said with a sigh, pinching his eyes closed with slender fingers as he did so, marshalling his thoughts. “But please, consider our position here.”

“Your position?” Alses echoed, surprised. “Please, continue. We're intrigued, to be honest.”

“We – the Towers, that is – feel a little...under siege, as it were. Yes, we're rich,” he added quickly, with a wave, forestalling her reply, “And yes we have influence, that I can't possibly deny, but...we've been terribly battered over the last few years, Alses. Rocked to our collective cores, for all that we put on a brave face in public.” Another long, rattling sigh, a gesture taking in the Tower and the great sweep of the city before it.

“We have to keep confidence, we understand that. The Towers are lynchpins in the city, after all; we have our fingers in many pies – and none more so, perhaps, than your erstwhile benefactors, the Dusks. But. As I said, we are rocking on our foundations. There was the Djed Storm in 512 – you were here for this, weren't you? Then there was that whole nasty business with the Anchorite – for which you have our thanks in dealing with it, by the way. The Zith swarms are a perennial problem, and we lost a lot of good men and women to the last lot, House Twilight in particular,” he added with a scowl. “Some of House Dawn's reimancers aren't always as careful as they could be.”

“After that, there was that terrible business with the earthquake, the one that shattered all the hothouses on the Sharai? I think you were involved in that one as well, weren't you? All turned out to have been caused – at least in part – by a Dawn-trained reimancer. Something of a pattern developing, you see?”

Alses blinked; she'd not really thought of it in those terms before; she could see why the Towers might be feeling a little beleagured, if she took that viewpoint.

“All of those events involved the Towers in some way – and many of them depleted our ranks or were caused in some fashion by people we'd trained or had welcomed into our fold. Or both. So, between us, the decision was taken to...limit things. To pull back, assess our position, rebuild and restructure. We can't just go around teaching our secrets to everyone who turns up asking for them; it's simply begging for trouble – as has been amply demonstrated. So, we have decided, as a group, to turn our attentions inwards, to put our Houses in order. As is our prerogative, your grace.”

There was perhaps a dangerous little lilt to his tone at the end, a subliminal bunching of muscles on a slender frame, honed through rigorous, religious practice.

“Of course, of course,” she murmured soothingly. “You have the right to determine what goes on with your Tower – it is yours, after all – and your House, so long as you aren't actively causing harm.”

Altelo sat back a little, slightly mollified – even though he wasn't as rabid as Lady Dawn, he still didn't react well to any attempt to curb the power of the Towers and Houses in Lhavit. Well. Not without good reason, anyway – he'd come to office through the sweep of Aysel's sword, after all, hadn't he? That had been a curbing of the power of the Towers in the most primal, brutal sort of way, but it had also been necessary.

Day of Discord and all that – and the sorry events that had led up to that point.

“We merely wonder – and this is just a suggestion, Lord Twilight – if you'd give some thought to at least an apprenticeship-style system? As it stands – with a few honourable exceptions within the population of our independent mages, of course – the Twilight Tower is the only group in the city with the skill in Morphing and the expertise to teach. Focusing on your own is all very well – commendable, even, taking care of your own kith and kin,” she soothed, feeling her way by instint and the flickering light of auristics, her power half-bamboozled by the perennial changes his Morphing mastery brought about.

“But there are only a limited number of people in House Twilight, just as there are in Houses Dawn and Dusk; that's a limited pool of talent to pull from, Altelo. And who knows who you might miss whilst you're focused inwards? The next Kalvale Twilight, perhaps, just looking to start out as a Morpher?”

Altelo steepled his fingers and looked, narrowly, at Alses across the tips of them, his eyes assessing, probing.

“It's a thought,” he murmured eventually, eyebrows still knitted together in a frown. “Not your usual method of action, your grace, asking us to consider something,” he added, but the twinkle in his eyes and the wrinkle of amusement that skipped through his aura in a rush of golden bubbles gave him away.

Even so, Alses bridled. “We are capable of learning, your excellency,” she snapped tartly, perhaps a bit louder than intended and certainly more smartly. “Besides, we already forced through one change that the city sorely needed; I must wear kid gloves and soft-soled shoes – metaphorically speaking – for the next little while, unless I want Lady Dawn to stretch me out over a pit and roast me gently for her own amusement.”

That brought a laugh from Altelo, and three brief handclaps, underscoring his merriment. “Ah, very good, very good! Yes, you are something of a quick learner, Alses. But...” he looked uneasy, unsettled, shifting slightly more in his chair than had hitherto been usual. “...I cannot promise you anything, here and now, you know that. I must consider the prevailing winds of opinion in my House, and where I see our city headed, before I can even begin to decide on such a matter.”

“But you'll at least consider it, Altelo? Lhavit prides itself on its magic, on our openness about djed – and to have our three greatest families, the greatest concentrations of magical ability and knowledge in the city, hunker down and close themselves in is...well, not exactly a good thing.” She paused, briefly, and tuned her voice to a soothing, confidential purr, a rich cadence of notes.

“We appreciate that the Towers are feeling a little under siege as of late. I think it's a good thing you're taking some time to look to your own, to heal internal wounds and rebuild a bit of confidence in yourselves. All I can do right now is ask that you at least consider the notion of apprenticeships if not a return to the all-and-sundry approach of the past, Lord Twilight – will you consent to that?”

He remained silent for an uncomfortably long time, breathing slowly and evenly, blinking only once in a very great while as he regarded her. Alses felt the pressure of his gaze on her skin, the weight of a very powerful person's regard no small thing.

“If you will consider taking instruction, Alses, then I think I can at least consider your putative proposal with my close council. Tit for tat, as the expression has it. I will see about having a quiet word with Sousa, to make things a little easier for you, too. Can't say fairer than that, can I?”

Alses shook her head in the affirmative, just as the clock that had been providing the steady metronome-tick that had underlined their discussion chimed, a bell-like crystal shimmer that danced in the still air and drew Altelo Twilight up out of his chair in a fluid waterfall of purple and black silk.

“Do we have anything more of import to discuss, Alses?” he asked. “I do hate to cut us short; I have meetings I'd prefer not to miss – but if you do need something more from me, they can wait. You are the Councillor Radiant, after all,” he added, with a wry little smile that didn't fool Alses for a minute.

Really, she was important because Zintila said so, and the Towers hadn't presented a united front against it. Not yet, anyway.

Whereas the Towers...the Towers were important because...well, because of the weight of people in the Houses, the power of the magic they wielded, the history which anchored the great Towers in the city and, not least, the family fortunes of those three dynasties.

It was rather a sobering thought, as Frost escorted her swiftly out of House Twilight's private domain and back to the great atrium.

END

[Elysium]

Alses

XP:
Persuasion +2
Reading +1
Socialization +1
Politics +2

Lore:
Politics: The Power of Social Engagements
Politics: Understanding Bureaucracy
Persuasion: Offering a Suggestion
Location: The Twilight Tower
The Unflappable Mercadier
Frost, the Lioness Kelvic

Notes: As always, it is a pleasure to read your writing. The apprenticeship-style system is an interesting suggestion. I find that your characterization of Altelo departs a little from how I've always imagined him. By my estimation, he is perhaps the least political of the three houses. In fact, the Twilight Tower is far more down to earth than the other two. I recognize that natural wealth and taste of yours spilling over into these characters. Conversely, he is more of a reticent and worldly spirit. But I'm certain that suggestion will only inform more of your wonderful writing going forward.

and so, the journey continues...