At the appropriate hour, there's what passes for a formal dinner (not particularly by Harsh's standards, but moreso than usual by Rowen's and Alex's experience) in the wardroom. Rowen and Alex have received word to dress for dinner, and explanations of appropriate dress.
Lark is wearing a blue dress and pearl jewelry and Martin has put on his formal wear, also blue. Not naval, since unlike his uncles, he holds no rank, but he has put on clothes that make him, to Alex's eye, look a bit like a Renaissance Fair refugee, only with a lot more expensive gear than even most Rennie’s have. And unusually, he's wearing a signet ring.
Reynart is dressed formally in the Weirmonken style, which is to say that to Alex he looks more medieval faire than Renaissance. Though he wears the garb well, there's no denying that the man has a warrior's build. He's big, and tall, and hairy enough to have almost hints of red fur peeking out at the wrists and collar. His hair, too, is a brilliant red, worn long and tied back in a tail.
Rowen arrives with Reynart, a contrast in physique and crinosity, but with the same red hair, braided and coiled fancifully about her head like a crown, to leave her neck bare. She's slender in practically every dimension and looks petite next to the big man. Over a light, white chemise, dark green silk wraps around her body in a slim fitting bodice that drops into an impressively draped skirt, full and flowing as she moves. Depicted with greens and browns and black, a pine forest exquisitely embellishes the trim around her dipping neckline, the hem, and the edges of detached sleeves from elbow to flared wrists. Silver threads, used sparingly like an indulgence, interlaces the forest like moonlight filtering through the canopy.
When everyone has arrived, Martin makes the introductions: "Rowen, Alex, Reynart, this is Commander Harsh Majumdar of the Golcondan Navy, who has brought me the logbook from the Klybesian vessel that Uncle Bleys fought in the nearby waters. He's going to be with us for the next while as we try to get his men home. Commander, this lady is my cousin Rowen, from Weirmonken, and her brother Reynart, who is accompanying her. And this gentleman is my cousin Alex, who comes from a homeland both similar and different to your own, but with some temporal distortions as well as differences in history. And of course all of you know my daughter Lark."
Lark stands up on her seat next to her father and pipes up with, "Hi Alex! And Rowen and Reynart! And Commander Majumdar!"
Rowen steps forward and executes a precise curtsey. "A pleasure, Commander Majumdar," she greets, with a familiarity around military greetings. Her brother follows suit.
Martin smiles indulgently. "Cousins, I have suggested that the Commander work with you to teach you about naval life for the duration of this voyage, and in turn hope you'll teach him what you've learned about travel in Shadow and a bit about the larger universe. But tonight let's just enjoy dinner and get to know each other a little better."
And he seats himself and starts passing the wine around (and waters it down for Lark).
Alex says, with a novice's disregard for rank, "Hi, Lark!"
He's dressed akin to Martin, although he doesn't look entirely comfortable in it. Greens in darker shades set off by black is the order of the day. The clothing is quite new -- it could be the first time this has been worn, although there's a bit of wear at the elbows and knees, as if Alex was testing how much flex he had while wearing it.
He apparently talked someone into using hops as a subtle embroidered motif here and there.
He bows to Harsh, and says, "Thank you, Commander. I was briefly on Uncle Bleys' ship; it's nice to see the other end of that fight, and I'm grateful to anything you can teach me about being on the water. My knowledge of the larger universe, such as it is, is at your disposal."
Done with that, he settles down and appropriates an appropriate portion of wine.
Rowen accepts the wine and pours herself a glass before passing it down. "I'm looking forward to your lessons, Commander. Tell us of your land, Golcond?" Reynart seems of few words and seems content to be excluded from additional lessons.
Harsh bows formally to each of the guests in turn. "My Lords, my Lady, it is the greatest of pleasures to meet you all. A thousand thanks to our host, your Highness," a bow to Martin, "and to his esteemed daughter."
Alex and Rowen will see a tall man in his mid-thirties, with a dark complexion, curling black hair, and a (now, finally) neatly trimmed beard. His Golcondan uniform coat has not yet escaped the mercies of laundering, and so he's dressed himself in the nearest thing he can find to his native style, in simple dark blues and greens. He looks mildly uncomfortable, in fact -- he's more accustomed to the longer, looser fit of a sherwani coat.
"Golconda is-- well, where to begin? We are a federation of many states in the the Indic subcontinent and our Navy holds influence over the Indic and Southern Oceans. I am from the city of Kolkata -- a port city in the northeast. Most of the young men of the city either become merchants or sailors -- and I chose 'sailor'." A wry smile. "Mind you, I had not expected that I would sail any seas other than those of my world -- or that other worlds were even a possibility -- until not quite a week ago."
"Daddy is from Rebma," Lark volunteers. "It's under the ocean, and there are Tritons there!"
Martin is busy with his wine when she says that and, if he was going to correct her, doesn't get it out before the moment has passed.
Reynart, like a good Weir, is making sure his dinner gets eaten, but Rowen knows him well enough to know that he's listening and watching even if he's not contributing to the conversation.
Alex looks curious. "Indic... um. Sort of a triangular shape pointing down, and maybe a big island off the coast way down towards the tip of the peninsula? I think my earth has something similar, but I'll try not to assume they're the same. Welcome to the bigger world, I guess!"
He raises a glass in honor of bigger worlds, and continues:
"I am as new as you are to all this, so you have company. We can all be surprised together. I'm actually really glad to hang out with other newcomers. There are a couple more recent arrivals, Delta and Misao -- you should meet Delta when you get a chance, she's a sailor too. Not military, I don't think. She's gonna kill me when she finds out I got onto a ship.
"By profession I'm an entertainer, I guess an actor. I perform in hand to hand fighting matches with highly predictable outcomes." There's a glint in his eye. "Probably I'm a pushover in a real fight."
"Someone will teach you, Alex," Martin says. "I've had to learn it twice. Fighting underwater, even in Rebma, where the water pressure works a little differently to undersea most places, is very different to fighting on land. But you won't need it for a while, so you have time to learn."
Martin turns to Harsh. "A lot of the shadow realms are similar in their continental structure, but we often only encounter them in small cross-sections. The folk of Weirmonken aren't native to the realm they live in, as I understand the history--" he glances at Rowen and Reynart "--but I think they live on the eastern coast of what you and Alex would think of as the Americas in an analogy to your own shadows."
Reynart shrugs. "That's more Rowen's business than mine. Fighting, I'm your man. Rowen's the scholar in our family."
Rowen smiled broadly, canting her head in acknowledgement. "He taught me!"
There really is a lot of food on the table, Harsh notices. Soup and bread and fish, and Martin has a cup of some beverage the like of which Harsh has never seen as well as his wine. And there's a joint of some kind of meat, perhaps beef or a related animal. And vegetables that probably were purchased in the market here. To Rowen and Alex, who have gotten used to the appetites of Amberites, it's not that unusual any more.
Rowen favors the joint of meat throughout the meal, partaking in some of the fish and bread and generally ignoring vegetables. "We, the Weir, came from a realm in the sky, before we were betrayed by the Queen of Air and Darkness and left to die in Monkland. We survived and rebuilt."
"That may sound like a fairy tale to you two," Martin says to Alex and Harsh, "but I'm sure it's a true story. Just like the underwater city I grew up in. And no, before you ask, I don't know the science of it. I've seen the city in the sky and talked to people who've visited it. More than one. And--let's just say I've had a close personal brush with the Queen of Air and Darkness and was glad I walked away without getting squashed like a bug."
Lark has shut up to listen, perhaps hoping that the grownups will forget she's here and say something really interesting.
"My grandmother is apparently a unicorn, so I'm going to believe pretty much anything. Science, enh, that was never my thing anyhow. Tell me more about this Queen? Is she family, or another one of the scary people who isn't part of the fam?"
Alex applies himself to the food, particularly anything that's new to him, with the occasional grunt of surprised delight.
A lot of it is probably new to him.
"Great-grandmother," Martin corrects, somewhat absently. "I've seen her. I'm not sure she was a unicorn when she birthed our grandfather, though.
"When I dealt with the Queen, she was busy wearing my stepmother like a glove and our cousin Sir Edan, who's a sorcerer, was trying to figure out how to break them apart. The High Marshall of the Moonriders showed up and dueled Edan and stole her away. Also we had an angry fire goddess chasing us across Shadow while all this was going on. I think we left the fire goddess in a volcano somewhere. She doesn't like Edan much. Anyway, the Marshall tricked me and sent me away, which I should have seen coming but didn't, Edan acquitted himself admirably in the duel and lost anyway, and the High Marshall departed with the Queen, presumably back to Ghenesh.”
"Is that what you were doing while Mama was helping Granda Syd, Daddy?" Lark asks.
Martin smiles. "That's what I was doing while Mama was helping Granda Syd."
"Probably easier to be a unicorn having a human kid than the other way round," says Alex, contemplatively.
"Hey, so sorcery -- is that like a specific thing or just what we call anyone who can do magic? Am I am idiot for trying to figure out if there are rules to that stuff?"
Rowen's brows furrough almost comically as she wraps her mind around the idea of "wearing my stepmother like a glove" and it's coming across probably far more literally than it should. The mention of Moonriders snaps her mind into sharp focus, though. "You know where Ghenesh is... and the Queen of Air and Darkness." She's too young to hide her overly acute interest.
"One more thing: who is Granda Syd?"
"Last questions first," Martin says. "Granda Syd is my father, King Random. He was travelling under the use-name Syd when my wife met him, so she calls him that. Syd for Siddhartha," he adds for Harsh's benefit. "He's like that.
Harsh has been listening to the entirety of this conversation so far with an increasing sense that he is very, very out of his depth; he hates that feeling. It makes him angry, but he doesn't want it to show, particularly since it's truly not his hosts' fault that he has no idea what's going on -- so he goes quiet instead and listens, partaking of the fish and the vegetable dishes. Which, he has to admit, are very very good. He does his best to commit as much of what he hears to memory, in hopes of making more sense of it later on.
When Martin mentions his father's use-name, though -- that really catches his attention. He's aware of the Buddhist faith, though it's far from prevalent in Kolkata, and he is in no real way equipped to talk about the way Hindu and Islamic thinkers discuss Gautama Buddha. Still, the name rings a bell for him in the way that very little else aboard this vessel -- apart from the fact of her being a ship -- has done.
"And Sorcery, yes, that's specific. Part of how we do what we do is because we're tied to the forces of Order in the universe. I don't understand all the whys and hows of it, and I'm not convinced the people who study it do either, but the gist of it is that we enforce Order by power of will. Order includes things like universal laws. Time goes forward, space exists in three dimensions, that kind of thing. Sorcery is the opposite of that. It's using power to break natural law. Things like tearing a hole in space so two places that aren't next to each other are. Speeding up and slowing down time or reversing it; that kind of thing.
"The other part about Sorcery is that a lot of magic and tech depend on local conditions in your Shadow, your world. Some places are high-magic, some places are high-tech, some places are more Orderly, some places are not. How magic and tech work depend on those conditions. Sorcery works almost everywhere, with a few exceptions. But that's not a lesson for today," Martin concludes. "Also, I'm not a Sorcerer. I've never learned it and never had any desire to. Order is sufficient for me.”
Harsh doesn't interrupt the rest of Martin's explanation, but it will be relatively apparent to all that he's beginning to vibrate with questions again.
"Your father's choice of use-name -- Siddhartha -- is curious to me," he says, "and if it's no impertinence to ask, I'd like to know how he came by it."
Rowen munches quietly as others take their turns asking questions. Though she displays table manners, there's a hint of preference for tearing at the meat over using utensils. Likewise, she's favours food meant to be eaten with hands.
Reynart's dining choices are much the same as Rowen's, though he has less to say.
"I don't know, actually," Martin says, rather apologetically. "He's never told me that story. But it will tell you something about him that the surname he adopted in that Shadow was 'Chance'. Which I also sometimes use, for all that the joke isn't as funny with my given name."
"Who's Siddartha?" Lark asks, standing up in her chair to look at Harsh. "And do I get to be Lark Chance?"
"You can be Lark Chance," Martin assures her. "And Granda Syd has the same Syd-name as a philosopher and teacher."
Alex glances over at Rowan, grinning. "See what I meant earlier about informal? Man, I never thought of that, but imagine trying to live up to a name like Random. When I'm performing I usually go by 'Lawless,' but I don't try to live up to that name otherwise. I mean, except when I drink too much."
"It makes for a good pun. Would anyone believe it to be anything but a fake name though?" She pauses to ponder. "Perhaps I should think of one for myself, now that I am traveling shadows with you. Maybe not Lawless, though."
"It doesn't have to be a great name. The Shadows will lie for you. People will generally believe it even if it's a little weird," Martin explains.
"What does that mean? How do they lie on my behalf? Is that something inherent for the Amber family?" Rowen asks.
Harsh has fallen silent again, though he certainly shot Martin a somewhat narrow, that's-one-way-to-put-it look at the phrase "philosopher and teacher" -- true enough, to be sure, but a bit of an understatement. He rolls the name "Siddartha Chance" over in his mind a couple of times. These Amberites have a strange sense of humour
Alex starts to say something, pauses, looks thoughtful. Then: "Even if they don't know you're from somewhere else?"
"Especially if they don't know you're not local. Some of it is that people see what they want to see, and I think what we are enhances that, Rowen. But also there is actual probability manipulation going on. As an act of will, even. But, for instance, do you have trouble finding small things?" he asks Rowen and Alex. "Like, Alex, how often do you lose your keys?"
Alex says very slowly, "Not that often."
Then he leans over and fumbles around under the table. Muffled: "Hey, cousin Martin, I think..." He comes up with a can of beer with some weird-ass label and stares at it like it was a two-headed calf. "I think the ship accidentally picked up a beer somewhere?"
Harsh actually glances under the table as if there was going to be a box of cans there.
He doesn't make the conscious connection in the moment, but it's certainly true that he always seems to be able to find the instruments or tools he needs when he needs them. Just lucky, he's always assumed.
It's Reynart who sits up and moves to take the can from Alex. "Prince Martin," he says, "Isn't that the beer you bought while we were in port on our way back to Weirmonken?"
"It probably is," Martin says with a smile. "I don't keep too close track of such things. But it's entirely possible to find some, so I can make it happen. So can you, Alex. But you and Rowen will be able to do it more easily and regularly when you come into your gifts. And you'll be able to shift Shadows the way I showed you, Rowen."
Lark is listening carefully and watching; the grownups are at last doing something interesting. Not that this is first time she has ever heard this kind of talk, just that she is listening to the lesson her father is giving.
Harsh feels a twitch of envy. Lucky me, he thinks, the ordinary one in this lot.
He glances over at Lark and catches her eye, raising an eyebrow as if to say: are you following all this?
Lark grins at Harsh and touches her nose, then points at him.
"What is the method to make it happen now?" Rowen asks, her voice tinged with anticipation, matched with a forward lean that nearly drags the tips of her hair in the meaty juice on the plate before her. "Is the process similar to how we would develop these gifts?"
"It's all one thing and we can't do it here and now. Dad's King, so it's on him to say when you'll get to do it. Meanwhile, though, you're vulnerable to being kidnapped and exploited as Alex and his companions were, so you're travelling under my protection," Martin says. "And the ship's. The ship and its contingent of sailors doesn't hurt.
"But the thing is, you're not invulnerable once you've come into your gifts. It's still wise to travel in twos and threes. Did Dad show you the cards?" Martin asks Alex.
"Yup," says Alex. "It's how me and Delta met Uncle Bleys. I was just telling Rowen about them earlier, in fact. We were wondering how they get made?"
He glances at Rowen, expression fairly opaque.
Rowen nods her agreement. "They sound fascinating. You can talk to someone completely out of earshot? It sounds... magical."
"It's a skill,” Martin answers Alex’s question. "One I don't have but Lark's mother does. And a bunch of other cousins, for that matter. It generally involves a lot of studying and asking questions and the person sitting for you. But--" and all three of Harsh, Alex, and Rowen, can tell that this is a story he's reluctant to tell, and so can Lark, apparently, because she stops what she's doing and scrambles into her father's lap "--there are a couple of things you should know.
"First, it's unwise to make Trumps of anyone unless someone's sure you can, well, do the Thing. Dad will know, and Alex, I gather he's already cleared you. Rowen, because we're pretty sure of who you are, and while we can't a hundred percent prove who your sire was, we know Cambina spoke for you and she was a full initiate. Anyway if you try to use a Trump of someone who isn't suitable, who can't Do The Thing, it'll hurt them. Badly, like migraine headaches if you know those, and worse. So that's a big no-no.
"The second thing is nobody should have made any Trumps of you, and generally that won't happen until you approve it. Which, you'll get asked when it's time to Do The Thing, and maybe you'll be more comfortable with one person or another, but, the point is it's another big no-no to make a Trump of an unwilling person. There can be mitigating circumstances, but the deal is that even though you can use the Trumps like a mobile phone or to travel, they can also be used for psychic duels. Or to reach through and stab someone in the gut. I know that last one because it happened to me." Martin grins and it's bright and nobody thinks it's real.
"So I personally am not a big fan. And I'm really picky about who has Trumps of me and who can use them. But the person who did that to me is dead now, and I don't think you'll have to worry about that kind of thing. But it's important to know that can happen and has happened, so you understand why the rules are the way they are."
More words Harsh can't make head or tail of, but he gets the gist of it. He has to put a hand over his mouth to conceal the fact that he's starting to laugh—not that any of this is the least bit funny, but—for pity's sake, a week ago or whatever it was, he was sailing for Antarctica, and now he is unimaginably far away from home and talking to people who sound like characters in tales for children. Speaking to one another through playing cards. How is this his life now.
He looks down at the table, hand firmly over his mouth until he feels like he has some control over his composure and hoping that he just looks like he's thinking very hard.
"Um," says Alex, after he drinks a bit of his beer.
"Okay, sorry, but one more question which seems really important. Do you have to be a family member to make the, um, the Trumps? Or could, say, those monks, the Klybesians, do they have someone who can do it? It sounds kind of like not."
"Would making a Trump of someone be a way of testing whether or not they could Do The Thing?" Rowen adds, verbally capitalizing the way Shatner or Walken Commas occur in shadow. Her eyes narrow as Martin describes the dangers. "If we cannot truly trust others of the family, is it even wise to have these Trumps made?" She pauses a moment and adds, "I would very much like to see how you make foam mobile."
"Mobile FONE," Martin says, to Rowen clearly enunciating the consonants. "As in telephone, for far speaking. It's a mechanical device. Probably they don't have them in Golconda, but maybe you have telegraphs? Think a wireless personalized telegraph," he suggests to Harsh.
"They were laying the first Golcondan lines between Kolkata and Hyderabad when we left for the south," Harsh says, relieved to actually understand something for once. He's seen the devices, though he hasn't yet seen one used.
"And yes, Trumps are worth it. That's how Alex got here. In military terms they're a huge advantage. It's useful for us to be able to get together in ones and twos, it's useful for us to be able to get back to where our uncles and aunts are, it's useful to be able to communicate a lot of the time."
Lark climbs out of her father's lap and resumes her spot in the chair next to him.
"We think you can use making a Trump of someone to tell whether they're capable of Doing the Thing but we're not sure. Lucas did exactly that to try to tell whether his wife was, well, probably your sister, Rowen. That's one of the dots we connected about the headaches." Martin makes an apologetic face in Rowen's direction; clearly he'd forgotten about that or meant to mention it earlier or something. "We can talk about Solace later, though.
"Wandering back to the question of trust--I trust most of my uncles and most of my cousins, the ones I know. I think things are different and better now, not just for me personally, but because the war scared people straight. And, Alex, I think the Klybesians do have a Trump artist, because I think they have place Trumps, which are cards of places, not people, and I think those still need someone related to us to make them. But they don't seem to have cards of people, which are harder to make."
"What happens if an ordinary person picks up one of these Trumps?" Harsh asks. Now he really wants to see one, but not if it's going to turn his brain inside-out or whatever happens when someone meddles with Forces They Do Not Understand.
Alex is taking his turn to listen, with half of his mind thinking about something else relevant.
"Commander, there are two answers to your question. The short one is 'it's safe' and the longer one is 'it's safe to use them with minor caveats'. Holding or viewing a Trump is safe, particularly if you don't look at it long enough to make a connection. If, say, Lark's mother made a Trump of Rowen, and she gave it to Reynart here," and Martin glances at Reynart, who had clearly been enjoying his fly-on-the-wall access to this conversation without much notice, and looks a bit chagrined at being named, "he could use it to contact her, and if she brought him through, to go to her. All in perfect safety.
"But, having said that, obviously if you're in mental contact with someone there are potentially psychic risks on both sides, hence the minor caveat. If I gave you a Trump of myself, I would expect you to--well, I wouldn't expect you to knife me through the contact, let's put it that way. But there's also the risk that anyone who has a Trump could be kidnapped or the Trump could be stolen. I think my uncles and aunts have long assumed security through obscurity: not a lot of people know what Trumps are and most of them are connected to our family and in our trust. But the question Alex asked, about the Klybesians, has been making some of my cousins reconsider that form of security." Martin airquotes the last word with his fingers.
Martin looks at Alex. "What are you wondering, cousin?"
"Hmh? Oh -- just thinking about getting places, mostly. Like... say a year from now, Rowan's done the Thing and she wants to go visit an old friend. How do you know you've gone to visit the right one?"
Rowen perks up a bit and leans in, attentive to the answer.
"That's complicated and hard to explain," Martin says, making a bit of a face. "Shifting shadow is more art than science. We can reproduce it but we don't always know how we do things. We don't have the kind of numbers it takes to do good testing. What I can tell you experientially is that you know by the people. On the good side, when you get where you're going, especially if it's home, the people will be right. If the people are wrong, it's probably a nearby but highly similar shadow. And if there's another you, a shadow of you, you're in the wrong place."
Rowen dips her head slightly, eyes lifting in consideration. "What happens if you run into another version of yourself? Would it be catastrophic or could you befriend yourself? If it's possible to have different versions of the people you're familiar with, why not ourselves, or is there supposed to be something unique about members of the family?"
Alex adds, around a mouthful of food, "I bet there is. We know there's some sort of identifier so the King can look at us and go 'yeah, relative.' So I bet you can only get so close... but I bet you can find people who look like us. I mean, plastic surgery if nothing else."
What surgery? Harsh is feeling lost again, as well as extremely uncomfortable with the idea that there might be other versions of him running around... somewhere
Rowen puts the thought into something audible. "What's plastic surgery?"
Lark stands up in her chair again and pulls a lock of her brown hair forward. "Does this look red to you?" she says to Rowen in a clear echo of something her father must have said in front of her before.
Martin sighs and heroically redirects her. "She's not that kind of redhead, sweetie. She's not Auntie Paige's sister, nor Auntie Brita's. And she doesn't know things like they do.
Rowen feigns mild affront, though it's clearly playful. Meanwhile she catalogues Paige and Brita in her mind, attaching them to a redheaded branch of genealogy.
"Plastic surgery," Martin explains to Rowen and Harsh, "is a form of surgery--cutting open parts of the body for medical reasons, like to remove a tumor or a bone fragment that doesn't heal--that alters the appearance. In places like the one Alex is from, people use it for a variety of reasons, commonly to avoid the appearance of aging. But I know from my travels some people want to change their identities, also." He glances at Alex to see what Alex thinks about that.
Rowen seems mildly horrified at the idea as Martin describes it. "Seems pointless to do that if they can't mask their smell," she opines, wrinkling her nose a little for Lark's benefit, though without glancing at the child.
Surgery, Harsh gets. To alter one's appearance, well -- he can sympathise with that, more than he's going to admit out loud. "I imagine it might be a help to those with disfiguring injuries as well," he murmurs.
Alex nods to Harsh. "Yeah, that. Different people have different ideas of what's disfiguring, of course. Me, I think thicker hips aren't disfiguring, but that's me. And like Martin said, sometimes people want to look different because they don't want to be recognized. Say you do a crime and you don't think growing a beard will be enough to disguise you. Although I think that's maybe mostly in -- in plays."
He follows up with a contemplative look at Rowan. "Hey, Rowan, how good is your sense of smell? Like, could you recognize Harsh here with your eyes shut? That'd be wild."
Rowen offers a slight nod, but makes no exaggerated display of sniffing anything. "Now that I've met him, I could recognize him. It gets easier the more familiar the person." She takes an enthusiastic bite of meat off the bone, then adds, "Or significance. Whatever inspires focused attention."
Martin continues, "But that's not what I'm talking about. I don't know how Dad can tell who might be able to Do the Thing or not. He hasn't explained it. Whatever it is, I don't have it. And I don't know what happens if you meet yourself on the road. I only know of one case where that happened. One of my uncles needed to supply a believable dead body for himself and found a Shadow substitute." He makes a face. "I think you usually only run into them if you're trying to get back to Amber, or maybe one of the other cities, and fail. But nobody is blocking the ways any more, so it shouldn't be an issue."
"I imagine at some point we will be brought before your father, yet it doesn't sound like we are going directly," Rowen says. "What is next on your agenda?"
Oh good, more fantastical tales. Still, Harsh is noticeably interested when Rowen mentions meeting the king. He's not entirely sure yet if he's invited, but he wouldn't say no.
Overall, he's intrigued by his dinner companions, and wants to know more and to see more of this vast ... manifold universe, or whatever they want to call it. He wants his men to be able to go home, but he's becoming less and less inclined to go himself, the more he hears. Even if some of it sounds ridiculous.
"That kind of depends on the uncles and the aunts. I think I'm going back to Xanadu with Rowen and this ship, but Uncle Bleys asked me to take on the business here in Tortuga, and Uncle Gerard asked me to take on Alex here, so I could get another errand and have something else to do." Martin shrugs. "The other possibility I have in mind is to go to Paris first. That would let Rowen meet my cousin Jerod first."
Reynart perks up a bit at the mention of Jerod.
"Prince Jerod, who returned the Weir to the Monkland?" Rowen seeks to confirm, as if to expect an abundance of Jerods. She leans in and raises her eyes in thought. "What is the difference between going to one or the other? I thought Paris had been destroyed along with Cathaldus the Great," she rattles off.
Alex says helpfully, "Jerod who helped rescue us from the monks? Little bit tiny certain of himself?"
"Uncle Jerod?" Lark asks, to complete the questions.
Martin's mouth twitches toward a grin as he listens to the different aspects of Jerod that each of them know. "Jerod is my mother's sister's son and my father's brother's son, so he's my double cousin. But he's Uncle Jerod to Lark by courtesy. And yes, he was deeply involved in the rescue from Greenwood, Alex--and he is the son of Eric who has been by tradition involved with the Weir. So yes, to all of you."
He turns back to Rowen. "I don't know those legends about Paris of old, but this isn't the same Paris, I don't think. It's Corwin's Paris."
Alex asks, as if it would help narrow things down, "Paris with or without an Eiffel Tower? How about an Arc de Triomphe? People wrestling on a ring floating in the middle of water?"
Rowen sits quietly, a little bewildered by the line of questions.
"I don't know about the water wrestling and I haven't been in the right place to find the Arc de Triomphe or not--I would assume yes--but the Eiffel Tower is in place and the Louvre is definitely there. In use as a palace, and no glass pyramid," Martin says.
Harsh is slightly less bewildered than Rowen (whom he has been regarding warily in light of her comment about her scenting abilities).
"The capital of Gaul seems to be a storied place no matter where one goes," he remarks wryly. "Though I confess that most of what I know of that nation is that the wars against them distracted the Albic -- the English, that is -- and helped get them out of Golconda, and for that we can't resent them." It occurs to Harsh as he says this that absent context, that little joke is not really going to land here, is it?
"Like with copies of ourselves, there are many similar places in shadow as well, then," Rowen says, more of a summary than a question. "Which means there may be places similar to my home." She pauses, considering the ramifications. "Or my home is similar to some other place."
"That's a philosophical question I don’t know how to answer," Martin says. "Corwin's Paris is supposedly composed, or created, or whatever you want to call it, from his memories of a place called Paris in Shadow that he lived in. But there are also these older legends of Paris known to the Weir, and also there's an out-of-time knight called Firumbras who supposedly remembers an older Paris."
"Is that the same place, Daddy?" Lark pipes up to ask.
Martin shrugs. "We don't know. But it might be.”
The conversation lulls for a moment as the sweet is brought in: a luxurious chocolate cake of some sort, small but heavy. Martin distributes it equally among the company with a full share for his daughter.
Normally Harsh finds non-Golcondan sweets to be uninteresting and not sweet enough, but the Amberites seem to understand how to make these things work. It's almost enough to distract him from additional implications of what Martin has said, but not quite.
"What of the people of Corwin's Paris?" he asks. "Were they ... created as well? Or do I misread your meaning? For it sounds as if a-- a Shadow can come into being, created out of whole cloth."
He wishes he'd paid more attention when his cousins' tutors talked about the universe as an emanation of the gods; how in the world did those men manage to make that stuff -- something about cycles of time? the universe being endlessly created and re-created? -- so boring? If it had been more interesting, it might help him make sense of all this now.
Martin shakes his head. "I think that's another matter of philosophy that's inherently unknowable. Paris is a special case, though. Corwin had the Jewel of Judgement, which is--I don't even know what to call it, a cosmic talisman? a magic rock? Anyway, it's the object of royal power, if you will, and it comes from the Unicorn, who is real and whom I have seen and whose presence and power I can attest to. And apparently Corwin had to Do a Thing and what he did made Paris. But it's a special case," Martin explains. "Paris isn't a shadow. It's--the common parlance term, and I didn't pick this word, is--Real."
Alex makes a face, but follows up with "And there are a few special places, all exceptions for whatever reason. Which... all have those special things in the basement which is where you Do The Thing."
He shrugs. "I don't know. Presumably my mom wasn't, uh, Real, but a little -- sorry Lark, sorry Rowan..."
He trails off and frowns as he does damage to his cake, without much attention to actually eating it.
"OK, that was sarcastic, but -- if it really is that someone's, uh, essence can create new real stuff, is that why blood is such a big deal?"
Martin nods, once. "I don't think people like your mother or mine are not real. I just know there are abilities, gifts, whatever you want to call them, that we have and other people just don't. Lark's mother described it once as being an immortal superhero," he adds, a touch wistfully.
Rowen fidgets in her seat, throwing a summary and a question onto the pile. "From your descriptions there are places that are--not your chosen term--Real, and these are Amber, Rebma, Xanadu, and Paris. We had different names for the first two in our lore, the Heavens of Earth and Water. King Random rules over Xanadu and Prince Corwin rules over Paris, which sound like they are new and would not have been in my books. There was another, the Heaven of Air or Youth, where the Queen of Air and Darkness ruled. Is that place like the others with a Thing in the basement?"
She sniffs at the dessert a bit before tasting it, shivering slightly at the shock of sugar from a single mouthful. She doesn't seem particularly enamored with it, but politely pokes and nibbles at it. If Lark shows any interest beyond her portion, though, she may find herself with more on her plate.
Lark is totally taking advantage of her father being distracted to get more sweet.
Harsh continues to listen -- grateful for Rowen's summary, even as it opens yet more questions for him -- whilst also eating every scrap of his dessert.
Martin is suddenly very serious. "If you know the name of the Queen of Air and Darkness, do not say it, Rowen. You would endanger us all. But yes, there's a Thing in the Basement in the Castle of Tir-na Nog'th. I haven't seen it myself, but I know people who have. And also, there's Avalon, which has a Thing in its Basement, too."
He pauses for a moment and looks hard at Rowen. "Sometime you should tell me what you know about Paris of old. Because I know some things about an ancient Paris as well, but most of that information is lost in Amber. Maybe we can put some things together."
Rowen dips a slight nod to Martin. "Perhaps after dinner then, over drinks, on deck," she suggests.
With the somber turn in the conversation and the disappearance of all the sweets--where does Lark put it?--the pause feels like an appropriate time to explore other things. Reynart and Rowen excuse themselves first, after sharing a glance between them. The latter breathes a sigh of relief after stepping out of the dining room and her faint voice mentions something about getting some air as it fades down the passageway.
One by one the others go their separate ways before the evening gets too late.
Last modified: 23 October 2022