Author's Nightmare: Interlude 11

Phelia was spending a lot of her time in the library of late. It was hardly something to complain about, of course. For several reasons. The library was where she found herself most relaxed most days anyway, and, if she were being honest, there were far worse tasks a woman recently married to an ambitious man might have expected of her. 

Her hand moved up to rest upon her belly absently, and she felt her lips dry a second. Shango had said that he wouldn’t make her…But then, men could be fickle about such things. Particularly desperate men, and it was hard to find one more desperate than a Belahont was currently.

And he’s been acting far from normal.

Phelia stopped the thought before it could swell further, making her way deeper into the library and searching for the book on Elswick’s genealogies. It was one she’d gotten a surprising amount of use out of lately, albeit not to any great results. Family histories were an excellent place to start looking for sordid affairs, embarrassments and, at best, potential claims. The only reason she didn’t fear the same being done to the Velaharo was that her imbecile father had already brought them to ruin himself. 

She found the book, taking it out of its place and straining slightly at the weight of it. One day, Phelia thought, the heavy, leather-bound tome would need separating into several other volumes. Each new generation of Elswick’s nobility just added additional mass.

It wasn’t a moment after Phelia even cracked the book open that she heard footsteps behind her and turned, surprised to find Lady Adannaya entering. 

A year ago Phelia might have been struck by the woman’s dark skin, but marriage to Shango had let her adjust to the foreign oddity. She supposed Adannaya must have found her own colouration just as peculiar. She was taller than Phelia, but not by much, and her wear was clearly selected for convenience more than aesthetics. 

Then again, Phelia couldn’t judge in that department. She was doing much the same thing, she walked too often for anything else. 

Adannaya smiled, and Phelia answered it in kind. She also raised her guard. A smile could do many things, and her own were used to disarm people all too often. Adannaya was a stranger in this house, still, and one Shango believed was attaching herself to the Belahonts out of political ambition. Phelia happened to agree. With their precipitous situation, that ambition could easily turn her against them. 

“Am I intruding?” Adannaya asked. Phelia was quick to shake her head. 

“Of course not, please make yourself at home. I was merely searching for…Well, this.” She held the book up, keeping her smile in place. 

“I see.” The woman responded, hesitating just long enough to be polite before she continued. 

“To tell you the truth, I was actually coming here to seek you out in particular. I had a conversation with your husband lately and was left rather…Uncertain by it.”

Phelia felt a sudden tension at that.

“In what regard?” She inquired, perhaps a shade too sharply. 

Adannaya told her, speaking clearly and cutting all the right corners to compress her account as much as was feasible. Phelia felt herself catch a chill as she listened.

“I apologize.” She said, once Adannaya was finished. “My husband has been…Under a lot of stress recently, I will have a word with him about this.”

The woman just nodded, not commenting one way or the other. That told Phelia more or less everything she needed to know about her thoughts on the apology. More, actually. That she chose to hold her silence rather than offer a false acceptance and mollification said that she either had a high view of Phelia’s ability to see through deception, or a low one of her own ability to deceive. 

“I adore your library, by the by.” Adannaya added abruptly, actually succeeding in stunning Phelia by combining her non-sequitor with a sudden and intense study of a nearby statue. “Some of these decorations are extraordinary, this is Organdae masonry if I’m not mistaken?”

Phelia actually found herself modestly impressed. It was one thing to have the origins of every piece in one’s home committed to memory, that trick was among the most fundamental and simple ways by which any imbecile could pretend themselves an expert of history by pointing them out and providing assessments. It was another entirely to walk into the home of a stranger and do so. 

Even if Adannaya had merely researched the Velaharo’s possessions after arriving, to do so in just a few days spoke well of her mind. Very well in fact.

“It is.” Phelia confirmed, realising she’d paused for quite some time. “Two centuries old, actually one of the younger pieces here.”

It was true. Her family had been great. Once. Like so many other treasures, her father had tossed that greatness to the side, but the relics of it still remained. Phelia dared to say that if she sold off her family’s remaining collection, they would be among the wealthiest families in Elswick overnight. 

And one of the most mocked. Prestige could not be bought, but it could easily be sold. Was that why she had refrained? Perhaps she was just clinging onto the past. 

“So I see.” Adannaya hummed, continuing her walk and drawing Phelia along behind her. They soon came to the largest portrait in the room, scaled to actually feature a depiction larger than the man it was modelled on. Handsome, proud, clad in plate and of course with hair as blonde as gold. 

“I do not believe I recognise this figure.” Adannaya observed, actually sounding like she considered the fact novel. Well studied then, given how she’d avoided even mild deception before this reaction of all things was most likely sincere.

“He’s a controversial one.” Phelia admitted. “Sir Etron, a young man who sacrificed himself some hundred years back to save my great, great grandmother from a necromancer’s wrath.”

Adannaya did not shudder, as most Eregaran nobles would have. Phelia remembered then that she was of Akanite, of Illeade in particular. Phelia had heard plenty of stories of her people- not all pleasant, and most of the unpleasantries stemming from their rather liberal view on the necromantic arts. 

Then again, she’d heard whispers that the clergymen of Elswick were rather displeased with her new family’s inventions too. No Witchfinders, not yet, but…Well, a concern for later.

“I’d like to hear the story.” Adannaya replied, sounding rather sincere in her eagerness. Once more, Phelia found herself unable to see through any deception that may or may not have been there. The knowledge was disquieting.

“It’s a long one.” Phelia shrugged, a deliberately un-ladylike gesture which tended to unguard those who’d experienced ostracisation among the nobility. Adannaya, she thought, was receptive. “Over a century ago my ancestor was threatened by the Dread Necromancer Khar. Sir Etron, courageous and powerful both, was merely passing by, a hedge knight of no particular influence or prestige. Nonetheless, he risked his life to fight off the necromancer and thus save my great, great grandmother. She was grateful, and he renowned as a hero. But dark casters are not to be slighted lightly, and this one bore a grudge for the knight’s interference.”

Her father had always told it in almost the exact same way, relishing his pauses. He’d been a fun man, with a strong sense for the dramatic. When sober.

“The necromancer came for Sir Etron in the night, and by the time its grim magics had been worked there was nothing handsome or noble left of him. He was a grotesquery, a shambling beast. An undead. And he was loosed upon the very family he’d fought so valiantly to save. His will was strong, and yet the frenzy of a recent reanimation stronger. By the time Sir Etron came to his senses he had already run my ancestor through, and the last thing he saw, so it is said, was her death rattle. Then the Velaharo’s household guard fell upon him from all sides, and put him out of his misery.”

Phelia realised only once she’d finished her telling that she was decrying necromancy to a woman for whom it was as mundane as fire magic. She glanced nervously at Addanaya, but found no hint of offence in her face. Though, once more, it could merely have been that she was so adept at hiding it. 

Shifting her fingers together, Phelia felt two of the rings scrape together. That reminded her of another feature of the story. 

“These.” She said, holding them up. “They are a good deal older than one century, and would have been worn by my ancestor almost all the time. She would have been wearing the very same stones upon her death.” A smile hit her at that, unexpected and warm. The anecdote had been a distraction from her faux pas, but had turned into an unexpected reminder that not everything her family had once controlled was now lost. 

Adannaya looked impressed, though, of course, social proprietary demanded Phelia beg her pardon still.

“Forgive me.” She smiled. “That story is a morbid one, I should have warned you before telling it.”

Addanaya smiled. “I’ve heard worse from my own family, believe me. We are the necromancers in most tales.”

The remark stunned Phelia for a moment, then she found herself grinning. The unexpected stab of irony punched clean through the tension and let a giggle leak out of her, which Adannaya clearly reciprocated. It was Phelia who spoke first once the two of their laughter subsided, eyes turning back to the tall portrait of Sir Etron. 

“You must think it improper for such a controversial figure to be displayed so brazenly.” Addanaya shook her head with what, Phelia thought, was actually a degree of passion. 

“The opposite.” She began, “I must praise you for displaying such a controversial figure upon your family’s wall. Your people’s church holds that those reanimated as undead can never enter paradise, if I am not mistaken, and yet here you venerate a fallen hero reduced to their ranks.”

Adannaya took a step closer to the painting, reaching out to caress the air in front of it, examining it closer. “Many would dismiss its themes, here, I imagine.” She continued. “But I find them invigorating. That a man could find himself even after being reduced to less than a corpse, that he might have the will to retain his humanity even against the magic of a necromancer and the destruction of everything there is about him…Yes, it is a good story. If the painting is controversial, then I can only admire you all the more for displaying it here to do justice to its history and the themes of its story, despite the disapproval of others who care not to hear them.”

Phelia nodded. “I am pleased you like it.” She beamed, deciding not to mention that her motive for leaving the painting up was that she thought Sir Etron looked handsome.