Heral ran his palms down the sides of his thighs. They weren't sweating, but, well, just in case. Squared shoulders, straight back, and head held high, Heral left his room and made his way to his father's study. The guards at the door announced him.
The study was as organized and understated as his father. Hirsel Aleron of House Treborant did not enjoy flourishes, but he did appreciate high quality materials used in the making of highly functional pieces created by masterful craftsmen that elevated that functionality into an elegance of form all of its own.
He sat with Sir Fenrick beside the unlit fireplace and gestured his son to a readied third chair. "Come, sit. Reham, pour my son a glass of the frosted cherry wine."
The two older men waited, watchful and silent while the senior Treborant Aide prepared the young Honorable's drink. They waited for the courteous sip Heral took before Hirsel Treborant spoke again. "Sir Fenrick tells me you made progress on your core skill! Tell me about that."
Heral flicked a glance at the Aide. "May we have privacy, father?"
A touch of something like sadness moved fast enough across his father's gaze that Heral wasn't sure he wasn't just imagining it, but the Hirsel dismissed his Aide.
When it was just the three of them, Heral began. He described a young woman lacking courtesy, arrogant as only a [Healer] in the face of their deep need could get away with, and his surprise at Sir Fenrick's grace.
His father and Sir Fenrick grimaced at his description.
Then Heral described the rebuke he earned, and the order to observe the [Healer]. He described the slow realization that sank in, that the woman was not arrogant, merely lacking the training to be courteous in the moment of their far more significant need. He described how watching while he helped her tend to their men, he saw the young woman's dedication, grit, and craftsmanship.
"Sir Fenrick said we are all born naked and wailing into this world, and over the time that I observed Miss Cerise, I stopped seeing her strata. That shift was significant to my skill, but the increase came when I was reflecting on Miss Cerise's defense of her family abandoning their cyr.
"While some may dismiss Wendynhelm now because he is a [Profaner] and revealed before all for his immorality, he was a covenant breaker before he broke the covenant constraining dungeons. He broke covenant with his Freemen.
"There is a great significance in the covenant between Freemen and nobles to [Noblesse Oblige], and somehow what I need to understand is something I'm failing to learn from the nobles around me. I think the failure is in me. I contemplate the corrections I receive, but I don't really grasp what I'm doing wrong. And so, I think the problem is not with my forms, but with my thoughts."
Sir Fenrick asked, "Do you think you'll understand more from a Freeman instructor?"
Heral shook his head. "Not an instructor, but a Freeman, yes. One unbound and without courtesy to cloud the meaning of her speech."
His father turned a pouting frown to Sir Fenrick. "You talked to him already? Or did the two of you plot this together?"
"Plot what?" Heral asked.
Sir Fenrick said, "No! No, Ale! I promise, I said nothing of my thoughts! I don't think I even let slip a hint! It's not on me if your son has enough self awareness to recognize from whom he learns!"
"Plot what?" Heral asked again, not willing to assume that his knight-master had been asking permission to take him out of the hirselland.
His father glanced with suspicion between the two of them a few times, then pursed his lips with sour amusement. Turning to his son, the hirsel said, "Fenny and I were discussing how to foster your skill growth. He suggested sending you off to shadow this young [Healer].
"It is not convenient for me to have Sir Fenrick away at this time. In fact, I recalled you two because I need him reinstated as my knight-commander, regardless of whether experience with the fundamental forms of a noble's obligations to his people is helping you or not. Pinlen is simply not up to the responsibilities.
"Therefore, I'm sending you with your cousins Mahayan and Izrai to Velton's new dungeon. If you are unable to progress in your class by Winter Solstice, I want you to reclass."
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Mahayan was a newly classed [Mage]. Specifically, she was a level 4 [Ritual Mage Novice]. Her [Shieldman] should have been a family retainer, but her parents were poor money managers and distant enough from inheritance that, but for Hirsel Treborant's fondness for his former leveling companion, the family would have sunk out of the Honorables altogether. Instead, her older sister, now a level 10 [Sword Dancer], took on that responsibility.
Izrai was a year younger than Heral, and an utter sword head. When she discovered they were traveling by horse and allowed to pack only what would sit on their horses for what was likely to be a two-year excursion, she immediately began brainstorming how to get a weapons locker and the specialized tack needed. She was willing to sacrifice her armor to fit more swords into her luggage.
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Heral, quietly, procured three Minor Pendants of Holding and distributed food, bandages, and coins between them. He recalled his classing run and the poor quality of the [Healer] Miss's clothes, and got a pair of Bracers of Moderate Holding.
Magic items were tiered according to the magic required to make them. Minor Holding objects granted the wielder access to a spatial distortion of about two cubic arms.
Lesser holding items expanded that to four cubic arms, Moderates to eight. A Greater Holding rune would give sixteen cubic arms of storage, while a Major Holding rune was good for thirty-two. Any larger capacity Holding runes were specialty artifacts, and a significant investment even for an Hirsel.
His father questioned Heral about the Holding items, listened to his reasoning, and added a few [Healer] skill manuals. "These should be helpful to an unbound [Arcane Healer], keep the Halls from locking her away in trade for teaching her. You cannot learn from the Miss if she is sequestered."
"I hadn't even thought of that," Heral said.
His father grimaced. "You haven't had to deal with the Halls. They mean well enough, but they treat [Healers] like fragile blossoms."
Heral thought back to the focused, determined young [Healer] he had helped, and laughed. She might be a blossom, but she was far from fragile.
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Mahayan did not take the news of their departure near so well as her sister. She quietly moped, allowing her mother to pack for her, and so ending up with more [Mage] skill books than clothes, precious little armor, and a training staff.
Cousin Ilyse at least made sure her daughters had food and tents sufficient for the trip. Heral was sure he wasn't supposed to overhear her saying, "And remember! You will have to rely on yourselves to put food in your bellies and shelter over your heads! Do not try to make Heral pay for everything! We are Honorables, we are family, and we contribute! Am I understood?"
"Yes, mother," the girls answered, Izrai with a proud snap to her speech, Mahayan dismally.
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Duties to their patrol, and then the arrangements needful for noble houses to send family members into another noble's lands, especially for an extended stay, delayed Heral's departure from Va'Treborant by a full cycle of the moon and most of the next one since meeting Cerise.
At least in that time, his father had learned the young Miss and her family had joined the caravan owned by the Ma'deron Consortium. The caravan master's name was Aldo. Over the twenty days of riding it took them to reach Va'Velton, Heral inquired after the caravan, judging their progress by how much they gained on the caravan.
The inquiries did not go unnoticed. Izrai asked him first, but Mahayan let some of her dour mood slip away as she listened for his answer.
"You heard about how Sir Fenrick's patrol ran into a goblin migration, right?" he asked.
The girls looked at each other, then called out, "No!"
So Heral told him the story from the beginning.
Mahayan's expression flattened when he related how he had chastised Miss Cerise for abandoning her cyr, and Izrai looked uncomfortable. They both perked up when he told them about Sir Fenrick's response and his own changed attitude after serving as her aide. When he confessed his growing discomfort at Miss Cerise's apology, they nodded in agreement.
Mahayan, in her quiet voice, said, "She must have been quite brave, to hold firm to her truth after living under a bad cyr. He made them speak blessings for him? No wonder he turned [Profaner]."
And that quite statement revealed to Heral just what had bothered him most about Cerise's apology. It followed the form of Etiquette, and his Etiquette skill informed him he should have accepted, but Cerise had apologized only to him. She had known that neither Sir Fenrick nor Honorable Mister Ethrick needed nor wanted an apology. But she had been afraid of him. Not embarrassed or respectfully repentant, but afraid.
It had not been a fear so great that he could identify it before now, but she had looked at him with the wariness due a wild beast, wondering if it would attack. She had come to the aid of his father's men without hesitation or reservation, and he had return fear to her. Heral wanted to thunk his head against something hard, but decorum prevented such an action.
He would start with an apology when he next saw the young Miss [Healer].
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One of the reasons it took them twenty days to reach Va'Velton from Va'Treborant had to do with the girls being unused to long rides. Both tried to be stoic about it, but riding with the patrollers had given Sir Fenrick the opportunity to instruct Heral in the Battle Readiness skill mutation of his Tactics skill, one which relied on a synergy with a well practiced Identify skill.
They had already solemnly invoked themselves as a team before heading out, which allowed them to work on their team skill mutations. Assessing their Battle Readiness through that link was fairly easy, and Heral wasn't sure if they noticed why he had them take so many resting stops, or set up camp as early as they often did when between seats.
The seats, and more importantly the nobles whose houses had established those seats, were the other reason it took so long. Courtesy between noble houses demanded that Heral stop to provide notice of his passage through their lands. There was a bit more room to claim expedience on the way to Va'Velton once they crossed into House Velton lands. His cousins, so far from inheritance, would have been exempt from such obligations, but they were with him.
When they were inevitably asked why it was the three of them alone, without retainers, Heral answered that he and Izrai were on a proving quest and Mahayan's growth as a [Mage] played into that.
When Hirsel Velton asked him the same question, though, Heral did as his father had instructed. He told the truth, recounting events from the moment of meeting Miss [Healer] Cerise to his father setting him the proving quest to advance his core skill or re-class. He glossed over specifics while admitting his faults, and even advanced his oration skill.
Hirsel Velton provided them a guide to seek out the Ma'deron Consortium compound to inquire after Mister Aldo's progress. Finding that they had finally caught up, they arranged to join the caravan.
Heral had had every intention of bluntly informing the young [Healer] of his reasons for tracking her down, but small comments from his cousins added up to make him question that approach, and he ended up asking for their counsel. The girls pointed out that everyone was headed to the dungeon, and they needed a [Healer] and a [Scout] for a full party.
And that was how they came to be waiting in the staging area when Mister Aldo's caravan prepared to resume their travels.