She looked around the crowd in a vain attempt to find any other familiar faces. Well, any faces that would be familiar to the boys; there were several she knew, but none that they could stay with. “Will you three be alright on your own..?”
Tim nodded. “We should all be fine.”
“With this many people, there’s tons of stuff to do,” Henry remarked. “I mean, they’ve got to have something to tell, right?” He decided to start putting that plan into action, walking towards one of the other party-goers.
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t end up turning everyone against each other,” Tim sighed. He went to follow his twin.
Lydia glanced at Tavin. “What about you? You don’t have to stay long if you don’t want to. This is supposed to be fun for all of us so if you’d rather be in your room you can stay there.”
He offered a small smile. “I’ll try to stay out for a while. I know it’s not the point, but… it’s always better to show them that we’re here.” Then he wandered over to where his brothers were.
She watched them for a little while before assuring herself that they’d be fine on their own; they were perfectly fine every other time, so now should be no different. Her first goal was to get a drink, then she went to find Mathieu.
He was talking to another group, though he didn’t seem too interested in whatever conversation they were having. When he saw her, he was quick to excuse himself to greet her.
“It’s refreshing to finally have you back,” he said with a smile. “It’s such a shame I’m expected to invite our neighbors… they make for rather poor conversationalists.”
“You haven’t gotten used to that by now?” she half-joked. “You’ve dealt with them this long.”
“Have you ever gotten used to the people you had to deal with?”
“The Stones are actually pretty close with everyone we have to invite. For a noble family considered to be pretty low on the ladder, we’ve got friends all over the kingdom and a ton in high places.”
“You’re also a family of adventurers so it’s no wonder you’ve gained acquaintances across Seothia—technically even Qizar and Idkor, considering Dimas and that ex-fairy maid of yours. Yet the double standard seems to be present everywhere. Didn’t one of the girls you rarely traveled with get ascended to nobility because of her mother’s relation to Queen Minne’s adoptive father? Aren’t the Stones still in the same spot they always were even though you borne the prince?”
“They’re not… really as comparable as they first look. For one, the most Domenique’s family did to screw up is be poor, which is something pretty much anyone who can’t claim some relation to a noble is. They didn’t really have a choice when it came to taking it and it saved them from whatever they were going through. Meanwhile I’ve done plenty of stuff no one liked and I can’t blame them for pointing it out because it’s true. I had the chance to get what Domenique did and I refused it. I didn’t need it and, to me, being useful for something was enough for me.”
Lydia looked towards where the boys were and gained a small smile. “Having him was all I needed.”
“Then perhaps I overstepped,” Mathieu mused. “Thank you for explaining it to me; I appreciate it. You’re much better at explaining these things than Imre ever was.”
“It’s just learning what not to say and then not saying it,” she mumbled, turning back to face him. “There’s not really any questioning. You figure that, if he wants to tell you, he will. If it’s something really important Casper or Minne would have mentioned it.”
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He let out a chuckle. “I suppose it makes sense, coming from someone who practically grew up with him. Though I’m sure at that point you already knew each other well enough to be able to avoid the mistakes I made.” He waved over a servant and took one of the drinks, offering one to her.
“The boys’ll yell at me if I end up being hungover tomorrow morning,” she mumbled while she politely shook her head. “We’re probably going to start wandering around the mountains soon, so it really wouldn’t be a good idea…”
“Ah, yes! What are you trying to find?” he prompted as he gestured the servant away again. “I never got to ask you earlier.”
“Okay, so first we started following phoenixes in their migration. It was something I had tried years ago but I couldn’t finish it. We figured out what we needed to do by figuring out the meaning behind some old text; we had to listen to the phoenixes’s song. At one point we thought we lost them but actually one of them—Melai—just stayed back to show us where the treasure was. It brought us to it and made us promise that we’ll take it with us for the rest of our trip.”
She dug around her satchel and quickly showed him the bottle of phoenix ashes before continuing. “After that, the next clue led us to Palus, where there was a river that didn’t flow into the Lake. While we were there we met this guy and his niece that the boys get along with. When we went out, we watched a couple of projections of memories and found out a little more about the guy who set it all up. Apparently he may or may not have known Eldrianna? Oh! And we found this. It’s how we knew we were supposed to be going to Tramos in the first place, though we haven’t been able to figure out anything specifically about where it is. We were just going to wander for a while until we found something that might help.”
After showing him the ring, she let him actually take it to have a closer look at it.
“You know, I think there’s an old story that might be able to help you,” he remarked when he handed it back to her. “There’s hardly any estates in Tramos that don’t look extremely similar to each other—I’d say Lady Onesa is the only one with something unique but it doesn’t go as high as this perspective would suggest. While there are a few temples and the like for those that chose to worship spirit animals and they probably could be this high, well… This border right here suggests a window that wouldn’t exist in a temple.”
“It’s beginning to sound more like we’re in the wrong place.”
“No, you’re right! Let me get to the part you’d be interested in. They say there used to be an ancient archive—somewhere rumored to have books explaining concepts we, even with the knowledge we have now, can’t begin to explain. But ’used’ is the keyword here: for one reason or another—no one can agree on why or how—the whole place vanished. Legend says it can be found somewhere around here and that it’ll reveal itself to the ones worthy of seeing all that hidden knowledge. It practically sounds like it was created for the Stones, don’t you think?”
Hearing the story gave her a rush of excitement. “That sounds exactly like the kind of place we’d be looking for!” She glanced towards where the boys were now and, seeing how it looked like they were having fun, decided, “I’ll tell the boys in the morning and then we can leave. Do you know anything more specifically about where it is?”
“Somewhere with a weeping willow in the distance,” Mathieu replied after some thought. “Though I don’t know where any of them can be found here that haven’t been planted in the past couple of years… They’re not considered native to Tramos.”
Lydia smirked. “I think I know a place where we can start.”
“You do? Are you sure it’s not a tree that someone else planted in the relatively recent past..?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s one of the oldest of any tree, with the kind of purpose it had.” Adopting a somewhat more solemn air, she then asked, “You wouldn’t happen to have a couple of candles I could take from you, would you?”
His confusion only grew. “What would you need candles for..?”
“It seems fitting. There isn’t really an excuse to avoid it and we can pay respects to the Keys while we’re there; one of them was Tavin’s grandmother, after all.”
Now he got it, nodding. “Just tell me when you plan on leaving and I’ll get someone to fetch a few before you go. Be safe over there; from the sounds of it, so many unfortunate things have already happened that it seems the devil’s always there. More selfishly, I would very much like to not have to be the one to explain that to Imre, at that point likely being the last to see you…”
She smirked. “Come on, you’ve heard the stuff we’ve done. This is nothing.”