The Estate, Sidra, Glacia, Saturday Evening Fandom Time

[wwiii]

Some days, Warren found himself drowning in paperwork. Some days, he walked into his office to be faced with a stack of petitions to Glacia's Consort that was so high he was pretty sure he would never see the bottom.

Today, incidentally, was not one of those days. He'd run through all of the paperwork on his desk two, three, four times just to be thorough, had even gone so far as to write thank you notes to those Queens and Consorts in other Courts to thank them for their attendance at this official function or that one. Karla was busy elsewhere, his phone battery was dead, and Warren had gotten to that point in the day where all there was to do was sit and pass the time by drumming his fingertips on the top of his desk.

It was fortunate that the Court Steward, Lord Mallory, stuck his head into Warren's office before he could drum some gouges into the wood.

"My Lord," he said, clutching a stack of paperwork to his chest, "Lady Karla would like me to remind you that if you're late for dinner and leave her entertaining alone again, she'll tie you to the General and throw the both of you into a closet."

Warren gave a wry chuckle in response to that, gesturing to his empty desk.

"That shouldn't be an issue. I have a few hours to kill yet, and nothing to kill them with." A beat. "What do you have there?"

Mallory looked at his own stack of papers, and then gave his head a shake, even as Warren pulled himself up from his seat to investigate.

"Nothing of any importance tonight, Lord. Merely the sort of correspondence that I've taken the liberty of separating out from the papers that actually need to make it to your desk."

Warren pursed his lips a little as he leaned over the stack. Considering the one on the top was addressed to, 'That Landen Bastard of a Consort,' he could wager a guess as to what the rest of the stack contained.

"Why not leave those with me anyway? It'll help me kill some time, at least. And I'll get a chance to see where I stand in the eyes of the general public, these days."

Mallory's expression suggested that he didn't think it was one of Warren's better ideas, but he wasn't going to argue with the Consort. He tended to do his damnedest to keep out of the way of Warren's baleful glares as much as possible.

"If you wish, my Lord, but do keep in mind that these letters aren't representative of Glacia's most rational people."

"It'll be just like looking at hashtags on Twitter," Warren replied, smiling faintly as he was met with a puzzled glance from the Steward. "I can handle it."

A few minutes and a few more cautionary statements from Mallory later, and Warren was sitting at his desk again, leafing through the mail with one eyebrow raised. He supposed be probably shouldn't have been surprised that 'Landen Bastard' wasn't the worst insult the locals had come up with, and he even set aside a few letters addressed to Karla that were obviously written with the intent of turning her against him in order to give a 'real Blood male' a chance at his position. They could laugh at them together later. Or, at least, make a mental note between them to laugh behind their backs at social functions.

Not that they were petty.

It was a letter about halfway down the stack that managed to actually grab Warren's attention, all of the rest aside. Written in a childish hand, it was one of the few letters that actually used his name, and though it was from outside of the Territory, there was something about a small child writing to the Consort of Glacia that made it difficult to set aside.

A few minutes later still, and he was stalking out into the hallway again, letter in hand, wings mantled, and bristling.

"Mallory! What the Hell were you thinking!?"

Mallory was not having a good day.

[OOC: For one!]

Comments

[wwiii]

Warren simply stood back with a grim cast to his features as Mallory stammered his understanding and his apologies. Right behind Karla now, it was all he could do to keep from flexing his fists too obviously.

The mantled wings were going nowhere any time soon, however.

"We need to go. We need to go now."

To hell with the aristo bitches that Karla was entertaining. This was about Cora.

This is Warren. He's not a Jhinka and his wings are very soft. He's friends with the Lady and he's come to tell us some stories.

Littlest kids up front. 'Cept for me. He's my friend, too.

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded. "Mallory, you get to make our apologies and entertain the ladies I left in the parlor. Listen to them, act sympathetic, but if you so much as hint that they can ignore my ruling about Arcerian fur, I'll have your guts for garters."

"Lady, I know my job--" Mallory began, then quailed under the weight of the glare Karla was leveling at him.

"Obviously not, or we wouldn't be here, now would we? Also, you get to inform the rest of the triangle that we've gone to Askavi and aren't sure when we'll return."

"Lady!" Look, Mallory knew he was in trouble, but come on. There were limits.

"We're off to save a life, Mallory. Any protests you have can't possibly stack up against that."

[wwiii]

Warren waited a moment more, long enough for Mallory to nod his understanding and his apologies, and then scurry off to do as he was told. Warren wasn't going to waste any more time than that, though.

"I'll arrange for the coach while you ready your supplies?"

Assuming Cora's letter had reached them with any approximation of urgency, there was a chance that they could still get there in time to save her mother.

Assuming. It was already painfully clear that letters from one small landen girl didn't seem to warrant any sort of concern from the Blood whose job it was to deliver them. Even to the Consort of a Territory Queen.

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded and disappeared down the hall, sending psychic orders to the journeymaid Healers who assisted her in her stillroom, telling them to ready a satchel of medical supplies and brooking no arguments nor questions.

"I'll drive," she told the Coachman when she arrived in the yard ten minutes later. Her tea-with-aristos clothing had been exchanged for something far more more practical and her supplies were safely vanished.

"My Lady, I must protest!"

"Excellent, you just did," Karla said, climbing up onto the board. "But I wear the Ebon-gray and speed is of the essence. Now, you can obey your Queen and climb down under your own power, or I can knock you down. It's your choice."

The Coachman scrambled down. "Excellent choice," Karla congratulated him. And then, thinking it through just a little further, she added, "Climb into the Coach with the Consort. We might need a driver for the trip back."

[wwiii]

Under any other circumstances, after climbing into the Coach Warren might have been amused by the Coachman's fascination with the speed at which they were going. After all, there weren't many people in Kaeleer who had the opportunity to ride the Ebon-gray.

No, Warren was far more invested in reading and re-reading the letter Cora had sent. She hadn't put a date on it, probably had never thought to. The letter was politely written, though the ink she'd written it with was blurred here and there, splashed with what Warren could only assume were tears as she begged Warren to appeal to Lady Karla, to ask her to pay her mother a visit soon, as it had been a long while and her mother wasn't doing well at all. She'd written about how her mother didn't know she was writing this letter, that she had to understand that the Queen of another Territory entirely almost certainly had more important things to do than to see to the health of one landen, several territories away.

She'd written about how her mother had tried to hide the worst of the symptoms from her, and how the amount of time she'd spent hiding had given Cora herself enough time to write the letter without being discovered.

She apologized. She'd had to sell the bird that Karla and Warren had gifted her with in order to be able to afford to send one letter as far as Glacia. The rates for landens were still exorbitantly high outside of Glacia. Not every Territory had a landen Consort and his Queen petitioning for their well-being, after all.

And she'd closed with a plea, that they get there soon, that they come and see her mother before it was too late.

Warren sat in silence for the entire trip, trying to bite down the growing dread that they already were.

[glacial_queen]

Their landing in Ebon Rih was neither smooth nor graceful; more than one Eyrien at the landing web winced at the Coach's jarring bounce.

Not that said wince was going to stop them from immediately surrounding the Coach and demanding information about who they were and what the Hell they wanted.

"The Queen of Glacia and member of the Dark Court is here with business in Askavi."

"Oh really?" an Eyrien--a Prince wearing the Opal--sneered. "Why don't we see what the lady has to say for herself." He wrenched open the Coach door to see...a rather disgruntled-looking Warren and a man in silver and blue livery who was still rather shell-shocked.

"You just did," Karla snapped, hopping off the Coach's board and making sure her Jewel was prominently displayed. "Now sod off before I contact Lucivar and have him kick your ass up and down the bloody mountain for being rude to a member of the coven."

"No offense meant, Lady," the Prince replied, suddenly much more respectful. "How may we assist you?"

"By staying out of my way," Karla replied shortly. "Feel free to let Lucivar know that Karla and Warren are in Askavi if you like. We're here for Cora. If he has any problems, he can contact me."

"Lady, Protocol dictates--"

"Fuck Protocol!" Seriously, Karla was getting annoyed here. "Go bother Lucivar about it and see what he says!"

[wwiii]

Warren spared no time climbing out of the Coach after the Prince opened the door. He did take a moment to dust himself off, mostly making certain his feathers were all in order even as the Coachman scrambled out after him.

"My Lady, I must insist you get back into the-"

Warren silenced him with a single raised hand.

"She has matters well in hand."

"But how will you get around without a Coach?"

In response to that, Warren, several Eyriens, and Karla all simply raised their eyebrows as Warren spread his wings to their full span.

"Oh. Ah. Ah, yes, I see. Very good, Lord. Well... Well, then, I'll stay here. With the Coach. Of course."

"Of course." Warren gave a brief nod to the Eyrien nearest him, and then held open an arm to Karla. If they wanted to stop them from going anywhere, they were welcome to try. But he had his own bladed sticks sitting prominently at his hip if they tried anything physical, and Karla wore a Jewel that made their own stones look like children's playthings. Any interference would be dealt with, and swiftly.

[glacial_queen]

You mean, interference in the form of an Eyrien Prince spotting Warren's bladed sticks and his lack of Jewel and deciding to take offense? That kind of interference?

Because that's exactly what was happening now. The Opal-Jeweled Prince put his hand up, practically palm-down on Warren's chest and rumbled, "Those blades aren't landen toys."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Karla snapped. "We don't have time for this! Look, Prince, I don't give a good goddamn whether you think my Consort is fit to wear the weapons that Prince Lucivar gave him--"

[wwiii]

"I've got this, Karla," Warren interrupted, looking the Eyrien dead in the eye, taking a step backward and flashing a dangerous smile.

The smile was made all the more dangerous by the fact that one of his blades was already leveled at the Prince's throat and the other was a hair's width shy of his crotch, leaving the others there with him blinking and looking at one another. No, none of them had seen the landen draw the blades, either.

"Prince Lucivar taught me well. If any of you has a complaint about me wielding them, you're welcome to take it up with him. But my Queen and I are in a hurry, and neither of us are particularly inclined to linger here arguing with the likes of you. So, either you can stand aside and let us pass, or I'll give each one of you a first-hand lesson in what I've learned after a few years of sparring with Lucivar, and you can all spend the rest of the evening contemplating whether or not questioning my skill was worth joining the Brothership of the Quill tonight."

Warren was not fucking around. But at least he wasn't threatening this man's wings.

Yet.

[glacial_queen]

Karla should probably not have such a wide grin right now, but she couldn't help it. Nor did she altogether want to. Warren was dreamy when he was riled and doubly-so when he was using Kaeleeran threats to make his point.

"He was really trained by Yaslana?" an older Eyrien male asked. He'd thus far been silent, deferring to the younger male who's caste and Jewel outranked him, but he spoke with the quiet authority of one who was used to obedience.

"For several years," Karla replied smugly. "He also serves in the Second Circle of the Dark Court."

The older Eyrien nodded. "Which means if we let Kalavar continue to piss around, we could be looking at both a pissed-off Yaslana and a pissed-off Witch?"

"And a pissed-off Ebon-gray Queen who happens to be standing right here in front of you," Karla added. "And who also trained with Lucivar. Though if you'd like to debate my right to carry sticks..." She called in hers, bringing them up in a guard position. And grinned. "Do try. I'm feeling a little aggravated right now as it is."

He mumbled something in Eyrien, which Karla could roughly translate to, 'Mother Night save me from witches with their tits in a twist' before calling over to the Opal Prince.

"Put your cock away, Kalavar, and let these people go. If they're lying, they can take it up with Yaslana later."

"But Pryovar--!"

"Now, boy. Or you can hie your ass up to Ebon Askavi and explain to the Dark Throne why you stood in the way of her Court."

"Maybe you won't actually see Jaenelle," Karla called, encouragingly. "You might just end up talking to Uncle Saetan for a bit. I'm sure the High Lord of Hell would just love to hear your bullshit."

[wwiii]

Warren wouldn't admit it while he was standing in their company, but there really was something to the way the Eyriens paled and looked as though they'd just swallowed thumbtacks that was really more satisfying than it had any right to be. He did smirk faintly as he sheathed his blades, at least, and then once again nodded to Karla.

"Shall we?"

He was finished wasting time around here with people who thought that they could intimidate him simply because he didn't wear a Jewel.

[glacial_queen]

Karla just raised her arms to him so he could sweep her up into his. "If I'd been thinking, I would have brought my own wings," she murmured in his ear. "Really give them something to gawk at. Let's go. Due south from Ebon Rih, though I'm not sure how long by air. Probably less than an hour."

[wwiii]

Warren nodded as he scooped her up, cradling her in his arms.

"I'll carve that time in half," he murmured, not giving the Eyriens in their company so much as a second glance before spreading his wings and taking off. "We've wasted enough time as it is."

[glacial_queen]

They flew off, Karla loading them down with warming spells as they sailed through the upper atmosphere. Askavi was further south than Glacia and correspondingly warmer, but it was still winter and the upper reaches of the sky had plenty of bite to it.

"She had to sell Skye," Karla said sadly. "I wish I knew what had happened. I had a journeymaid Healer looking in on them because of the war, but I never went back. Oh, Warren, whatever happened is all my fault."

[wwiii]

"Oh, Karla, no," Warren murmured, keeping his eyes forward as he flew. "We went to war. Whatever happened here in the meantime wasn't good, but it wasn't your fault. It was bad timing and bad circumstances all around. And even after that, there were the months we spent as other people entirely, and finding a spare minute edgewise..."

He frowned a little more deeply, himself.

"I haven't visited Cora in all too long, myself. I should have known, too."

[glacial_queen]

"We'll make it in time," Karla said. "We always do. We'll make it in time and then we'll make it up to them. We'll buy Cora a new bird...maybe they'll be amenable to relocating to Glacia! We can find them a nice snug little house and they'll be close by if they need anything at all."

[wwiii]

"Right," Warren agreed, almost too quietly to be heard over the wind rushing past their ears. "They'll be fine."

Because they'd said so. And that was how things went, wasn't it? Things were always, always fine.

"I'm sure they'd be willing to move. I mean, not only will they be closer to you, but Glacia's made so many strides since the war..."

Of course they'd be happy to move!

[glacial_queen]

"Working on strides towards landen equality..."

Always, always fine, dammit! Maybe Cora had just been worried that whatever was wrong with her mother would be too much for the journeymaid Healer. Who wouldn't want the best care for their only remaining parent? They would show up, the journeymaid Healer would catch Karla up on what was wrong, and Warren would shower Cora with attention and affection while Karla fixed whatever was wrong. Then they could summon the Coach, pack everything important into it, and bring the family home to Sidra.

Perfect plan was perfect. Except...

"Warren, look. That's their house." Karla leaned over to point, then peered closely at it. "It's...it's hard to tell from this distance, but...I don't see any smoke from the chimney."

[wwiii]

"It's too dark for me to be able to tell if there's smoke or not," Warren murmured, sounding almost apologetic. He could see well. He could see very well. But really only in the daylight. "I can't make out any light from the windows, but that could just mean that they're sleeping."

He was swooping downward, flapping his wings to pick up speed. He really didn't like the sight of that. Not at all.

[glacial_queen]

Karla's stomach dropped along with Warren's dive and she couldn't help a loud, "Whoo!" Yes, the letter carried grim tidings, but flying in Warren's arms was just as fun now as when they'd been kids.

He flared his wings a few feet above the ground, slowing them enough that he was able to land gently. Karla vaulted out of his arms even before his feet hit the frozen earth, running towards the cottage.

It was dark, with none of the homey touches that Karla remembered from their last visit. No curtains in the window, no laundry on the line, no handful of flowers in the window. The flowers could be explained away by the season, the lack of laundry by Cora's mother's illness, but the curtains?

She knocked loudly on the front door. "Cora? Mrs. Hewer? Anyone?"

Under her knuckles, the door creaked open, just enough for Karla to peer inside. It was empty, devoid of people and furniture both. "Warren!" Karla cried out.

[wwiii]

Warren was a half-step behind Karla when she called for him, leaning over her shoulder to look inside.

Now it was his turn to feel his insides lurch.

"Empty?" That was bad. That was really, really bad. "Okay... Okay, we can still work with this. They had extended family, right? I remember Cora mentioning that she had an aunt they stayed with, once. Maybe they're with them again, if her mother's health has slipped that much."

[glacial_queen]

"Did Cora mention anything about that in her letter?" Karla asked. "Her aunt was in Doun, if I remember correctly. She had a ton of kids, which is why Cora and her mom didn't stay with them long, but if Mrs. Hewer needed the extra help..."

It was a place to start, if nothing else.

"Ready for a another long flight?" she asked. "We have a lot of ground to cover. And it will be late when we arrive."

[wwiii]

Warren gave his wings a stretch, and then nodded.

"She didn't mention anything, but for all we know, Lord Mallory might have sat on that letter for a long time, never mind the time it would have taken to get to us." He frowned a little, and then shook his head, reaching to scoop her into his arms again. "Doun? I'll have us there in no time."

[glacial_queen]

This flight lacked even the sparse conversation of the first. True night had fallen and the wind had picked up, which meant that more of Warren's attention was on flying them safely through the air than on making small talk that neither of them were truly interested in.

They landed in Doun almost a full hour later, Karla scattering the crowd that had formed when Warren fell with a snarled curse. The Blood of Doun were pale, short-lived Rihlanders, like the native population of Ebon Rih, though much less used to winged people landing in their midst.

One Blood boy, slower to scatter than the rest, found his collar getting tugged back over to where they were standing. "The landen section of the city?" Karla demanded. "Seamstress Street?"

The boy pointed and babbled off directions, clearly less interested in why a Queen would want a landen street than making sure she had no reason to turn a baleful eye on him. His original trepidation had no trouble turning to excitement when she slipped him a silvermark for the information. "Thanks, my lady!" he shouted, darting away. "If you need any more directions, just ask about for Nyles. S'me!"

[wwiii]

Warren watched the boy scurry off, and then nodded to Karla, offering her an elbow.

"Let's, then?"

His wings ached, though they'd be quick to soothe themselves, thanks to his healing factor. But the directions that Nyles had given them were simple, and the walk didn't seem too terribly far. They could handle this one on foot.

A few minutes later, and they were knocking on the door that Karla recognized as belonging to Cora's aunt.