Vol.4, Ch.2, P.9
Ina looked to the lord, pausing briefly before parting her lips.
“…I beg your pardon, Excellency,” she answered, “but I am merely a meek maiden, who knows only to shiver behind your lordly shield; I fear I have no measure to make.”
Bartt broke in lilting laughter. “No need to abase yourself so,” he said, “for surely there be offices only you can fulfil, my fair lady.”
The lord then wholly gave his gaze to the guildmaster’s daughter, darting from limb to lovely limb, a salacious leer licking her every nook and cranny, unclothed and otherwise. The imagined molestation scarce escaped Torry’s ken. With an unchanging expression, he endured the indignity upon his daughter—even as indignance boiled in his bosom.
“Ah, yes. That reminds me,” the lascivious lord said to Ina, “you have suffered your own share of troubles of late, have you not? Poor thing. The wounds upon you. Should the burden ever prove too painful to bear, do know that by my hands can much healing be had.”
“Such warmth—I am unworthy, Lord,” Ina returned. Sure enough, moons past saw her a tragic victim to the dark and deviant lust of another nobleman. That the lord of Tallien knew of this, and yet leashed not his own lust for her in the least, served only to further incite Torry’s distaste.
Yet in the guildmaster was also the spark of surprise. For, though he never faulted her for it, ever did he deem his daughter a timid soul, one certain to swiftly quiver and cast down her eyes afore so thinly-veiled an advance. But glancing at her now, Torry found his daughter undaunted. Indeed, Ina seemed succoured by some new, inner strength as she remained sat beside him, erect and resolute.
Like her father, surprise was had, too, in her own heart, for rather than account Bartt as a monolithic lord never to be demeaned, Ina instead found herself noting him as naught more than a miserable mongrel of a man.
Undue doubt and contempt were never constants in her character. Not for the landed lords of Londosius. Neither for the Crown and Church that the realmfolk regarded with all reverence, nor for the systems they conceived and sustained. Regarding religion, sure, Ina was a maiden raised amongst merchants and moneyers, growing up with a fonder grasp of the abacus than the scriptures. But that ill-meant she was out of line with her fellow Londosians. No; in her own way, Ina kept lit the fire of faith.
Till recently, that is. Over such pious shine was a shadow newly cast. Doomed to the deepest despair in the Albecks’ dungeon, Ina has had her faith shaken to its core. And when all the world about her seemed ready to crack and crumble, who was it that had come to deliver her but that man. In him she saw true light, an unbridled nobleness of heart remembered only in the olden tales.
And if he be such a noble beacon, what did that make of the nobles sitting afore her now? His Excellency the Viscount Bartt Tallien and his daughter, the Lady Sophie—they who ought exude nobleness in carriage and character, in mien and manner? Ina was hard put to guess what. Comparison in and of itself seemed silly, for both the head and heir of House Tallien were like two stars first to fade against the rising sun that was her saviour.
For his part, in spite of his slavering stare upon Ina’s every feature, Bartt, at the last, could espy none of his fancy’s heart, nor the misgivings moiling inside her. Instead, he simply reached over to the table afore him, flipped a single sheet of paper that had been lying upon it, and slid it forth for the guildmaster and his daughter to see.
“Speaking of burdens,” Bartt broached, “Master Torry. This you and yours will gladly bear, I trust.”
Torry unravelled his strained fingers. “If I may,” he obliged, taking up and perusing the paper.
That “burden” was none other than the coming battle. To wit, the wages needed to wage it. Amassed in Tallien was the knightly host of the 3rd; numberless mouths to feed, supplies to provide, services to tender—all to be specially paid for by both the princes and paupers of this province. What was writ upon the paper, then, was the share to be shouldered by the Roland Concern.
Torry had every mind to bear his fair brunt. The viscounty of Tallien was his home, after all, his theatre of operations; as man and merchant, he considered it his duty to protect it with such succour as he could afford. Yet the price penned upon the paper sooner blanched his face than filled it with patriotic pride.
“M… milord…” the guildmaster began hoarsely, “…I fear this burden will break us.”
“Perhaps,” Bartt returned passingly. “But war weighs more heavily. Only coin can lighten the scale.”
The sheet in Torry’s hand quivered. “Certainly so, but… this—”
“Master Torry!” Sophie exclaimed. “You would sooner protect your purse than your patrons? Your people!? Know some shame, you!”
A tone singeing with ire. Yet it ill-moved Torry. The paper in his hands was as the headstone to the lustrous history of the Roland Concern itself, for to pay the expected price was to empty nigh on every one of the company’s coffers. The palatial headquarters itself would needs be put to market, and Torry himself reduced to a master of but a hovel of a business, as the Concern was many decades ago. Operations, projects, services—each and all would either shrink or shrivel to naught, and the greater number of his dear Rolanders, who so proudly plied their professions to further the Concern’s fortunes, would be left to scatter to the wind. And such excluded the customers, the clientèle, the connections hard-earned over the many years. What would become of them and their unthinkable thousands?
Indeed, lives would be ruined. Many, many lives. Such was ever the reach of the Roland Concern. And so to accept the viscount’s terms, if even considering what damage might be meted upon this province alone, was certain insanity.
“Milord,” Torry began again amidst those very thoughts. “I beg your pardon, but this shall consign countless to the streets…”
Bartt huffed under his nose. “Better the streets than the pyres of war.”
“Many a shoulder can share a burden,” Torry persisted. “Suppose other companies be invited to the table. Apportion between us this price, and it will seem not too princely to be paid, you would agree? Why, my counters can even handle the estimates, if—”
“A miserly thing you are, Guildmaster!” again came Sophie’s rebuke. “The lustre of your troves has blinded you that much, has it!?”
For all of her fury, the lady of House Tallien could never have fathomed fully what was at stake: the plan’s sheer preposterousness would punish the weal and well-being of this fiefdom for generations to come. But her lord father ought be more enlightened than she, and that was precisely why Torry himself could not guess his intent. Beyond all doubt, Bartt must have known what evil he might invite to his viscounty by the very contents of the paper in Torry’s hands alone.
“Well, Ina?” Bartt said, turning to his fancy once more. “Might you now have a measure for this matter?”
A question not asked out-of-hand. Ina was brightly learned in her numbers—enough to oversee the accounts of the Concern as its chief treasurer. The position had earned her a seat in this very meeting, in fact, yet it was the bare truth that one ill-required Ina’s qualifications to scry the absurdity in Bartt’s proposal.
“…Yes, Lord,” she answered. “I measure much the same: with Roland’s purses alone is this price impossibly paid.”
“‘Impossibly paid,’ you say, when war growls at our gates,” Sophie snarled. “Hmph. Birds of a feather, indeed.”
“Come now, Daughter,” Bartt admonished her before turning to the fellow father in the room. “Master Torry. Much hangs in the balance, but I should not expect a decision made here and now. No; Sophie and I shall take our leave, although… I much hope for your favourable—and swift—answer.”
“You would do well to espy an opportunity so plain, Guildmaster,” said Sophie as she stood to her feet with her father. “An opportunity to pay back all the princely concessions our house has vouchsafed unto you Rolanders over these many years. Even a sproutling merchant knows sooner to pay back his debts than double them.”
Such were her words, yet the truth was quite the contrary: not once had the Roland Concern savoured any largesse from the lord’s house. Certainly were the predecessors of both Bartt and Torry on good terms. But that was the full extent of it: good, speaking terms. Thus mistake this not: the Roland Concern owed not one crusty copper to the viscount, and perhaps not even to the viscounty itself.
Still, to air this truth was unwise, and Torry knew this well. With the Talliens taking their leave for the day, precious time was bought to mull the matter in full. Yet the guildmaster nevertheless sensed himself at a dead end, and so answered Sophie the only way that he could.
“…You are most correct, milady.”
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