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]

"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.

[glacial_queen]

A middle-aged woman answered, one who looked far older than her years. Her face was lined and her hair prematurely gray. Her back was stooped and her knuckles were swollen and red. She was clad in her nightgown and looked very cranky at having been summoned to the door.

"I swear, if you woke my brats up, I'll--!" Her demeanor instantly changed upon seeing two members of the Blood standing in front of her. The anger smoothed away to be replaced by badly-hidden fear and an obsequious smile. She bobbed an abbreviated curtsy in her nightshift. "Good evening, my lord, my lady. How can I assist?"

"I don't know if you remember me, ma'am," Karla said gently. "I met you several years ago, looking for your sister and your daughter. I left you a pot of lotion to help with the stiffness in your hands?"

Rather than putting her at ease, the woman in front of them stiffened further. "I remember," she said. "Worked like a miracle it did, for as long as it lasted. My thanks, my lady." Yet she didn't acknowledge her sister or niece, certainly didn't say they were within.

"I shall have to give you a bigger pot this time," Karla continued. "I can only imagine how much worse your arthritis is in the winter. But anyway, I know the last time I was here, you told me that Cora and her mother had moved. I hope you can give me the same information again? We visited their cottage and they appear to have left."

[wwiii]

The woman looked uncertainly between Karla and Warren, and it was perfectly clear on her face, even without the ability to sense the unease and a hint of sorrow on her psychic scent, that the two weren't going to like the answer.

"Apologies, my lady," she said, carefully. "My sister has been dead at least this past month."

Warren put effort into not flinching visibly. He still didn't quite manage.

"And her daughter? What happened to Cora?"

The sinking feeling in his guts was really not improving any. Especially when the woman in the doorway stood quietly for a few moments more before she felt she could even begin to answer.

"If you're asking if she's here, my lord, I'm afraid she's not. I've already got far too many mouths to feed here, I can't go taking in each and every child to end up on my doorstep, my sister's daughter or not."

[glacial_queen]

"Then where is she?" Karla asked, clutching Warren's hand. Her voice felt tight, like her throat was closing up even as she tried to make words. "Where do you send her, when you threw her out of your house, away from her family?"

It was possible that the jar of lotion wouldn't be forthcoming now.

"Forgive me, lady, but we can't all be wealthy Blood aristos," Cora's aunt snapped. "I've got seven children of my own and my man got on the wrong side of a Blood dispute and now he's lame and can barely work! One more child, even my own kin, could push us right over the line to poverty. What could I do for her if we were all kicked out of this place and unable to eat?"

"Still more than you're doing for her now," Karla said bitterly.

"I sent her to a Blood-run orphanage," the woman hissed. "If she's not being cared for there, then it's your own people's fault and not mine!"

[wwiii]

Warren's feathers prickled at that, and he couldn't help but ball his hands into fists. Deep breath in. Slow breath out.

After a moment, he reached to gently lay a hand on Karla's arm.

"Then we'll see to it that Cora sees better care than any of your own," he said, simply. He could sympathize with their troubles, to a degree, having seen the landens of Glacia struggling to survive under Hobart's reign. But any landen here had to know full well that sending a landen child to an orphanage run by the Blood could only lead to further misery for the girl. To be an orphan and to be raised by a group of people who would only ever think of you as inferior...

His wings mantled again at the thought.

"Just tell us which orphanage you sent her to, then, and we'll be on our way."

[glacial_queen]

"Like there's more than one landen orphanage," the woman snapped. "Your people don't give us that kind of consideration. We get one and are expected to be happy about it!"

And with that, she turned around and slammed the door in their faces, so frustrated that she didn't realize that, as Blood, they could tear the door right off its hinges (or the front wall right off its foundation) to get the information they wanted. By the time common sense caught up to her, she was halfway up the stairs and decided that it was better to hide and risk their anger that way than to go back and face it directly.

Luckily for her, neither Karla nor Warren were the type to teach her a lesson about the proper respect due to Blood from a landen. Or, rather, Warren wasn't and Karla was properly ashamed of that flash of 'I am a Queen, how dare you!' temper that she quickly swallowed back.

"Well," she said, shakily. "That's that, I guess."

[wwiii]

"That's that," Warren sighed, biting back his own spiteful urge to just rake his claws across the woman's doorframe. Give her a reminder of the sort of people whose faces she just slammed that door in. He wasn't that spiteful, though, just frustrated, and he let out a sigh to match. "What did that kid say his name was? It looks like we're going to need more directions."

Nyles? Nyles, who actually turned out to be fairly easy to find. After all, he wanted to be easy to find, if it meant he could get a few more silvermarks tonight. If it was well past his bedtime, well, he was hardly the sort of child to care.

"Hey," Warren said, giving the boy a wave as he spotted him down the road. "We've got another question for you..."

[glacial_queen]

"That so?" The boy asked, turning a cheeky grin Warren's way. "Well, I've got plenty of answers, though I'm awful hungry. Might be hard for me to concentrate on answering them, if you know what I mean."

*Someone call Dickens. Tell him an urchin is missing,* Karla thought sourly at Warren. She was in no mood for games.

"Give us directions to the landen orphanage and we'll give you plenty of money for dinner and breakfast, too."

The boy's expression shifted, sombered. "Well, my lady Queen, I'd love to do that, I really would, but me giving you directions right now wouldn't do you a lick of good. It's locked up tighter than a Blood jewelry store. Doubtful anyone'd answer right now anyway."

"They'll open for me."

Nyles shook his hear regretfully. "None but landen staff there now. The Blood administrators won't be in till mid-morning. No luck getting answers or information or much else till then."

[wwiii]

Warren exchanged a look with Karla, and then crouched down a little, so that he could look eye-to-eye with the boy.

"Can you give us directions regardless? A very dear friend of mine is in there by mistake, and I intend on making certain that she's safe and well." A beat. "Unless, of course, you happen to know where the administrators themselves spend their nights. I'd be willing to add a goldmark to your pay for information like that."

Rather than, you know, ripping the hinges from an orphanage door and leaving the landen caretakers to catch Hell for the damages come morning.