Chapter 1074: Awkward Smalltalk (Part One)

Loman sat in a luxuriously appointed sitting room, looking from the furnishings to the decor with a growing sense of… of what, he wasn’t quite sure.

Part of him felt like he was floating in a castle that only existed in dreams, and when he looked out the clearest glass windows with the largest panes he’d ever seen, the mist-shrouded tree-tops and the distant shapes of the other towers of the Ancient Fortress only added to that feeling. Like, this place couldn’t quite be real.

Another part of him felt like he’d once again become an uncouth, country lord like he’d been on his first visit to the Royal Capital as he took in the grandeur of Ashlynn’s sitting room. Most of the furnishings featured intricately carved woodwork with tables and chairs that lacked any of the gilding he would have expected in the sitting room of a noblewoman.

Instead of covering up the bare wood with paint or gilding, skilled artisans had transformed simple table legs and chair backs into works of art that resembled streams tumbling over stones and winding between trees on their way to the floor, and every bit of it felt like it was a frozen moment in time, as if each of those streams were simply waiting for Ashlynn’s command to turn back into water and begin flowing again.

“Is all, um, Eldritch furniture like this?” Loman asked carefully as he tried to make small talk. He’d had a chance to change into fresh clothes and to wash up before joining Ashlynn in her chambers for a more private reunion, but evidently, he’d arrived before she’d finished preparing whatever it was she intended to share with him for an early afternoon meal.

“The way the furniture is carved,” he said, looking at it more closely. “It reminds me of the miracle of healing you performed for Sir-, for Knot,” he said, thinking about how her emerald energy had spilled from her hand like water, flowing over her and the former knight before it rose as a mighty willow tree.

“Most of these pieces were made by the Heartwood clan,” Ashlynn said as she carefully measured spices into a small pot that she was preparing to hang above the fire. “The ones you call ’flat-tailed demons,’” she explained as her fingers sorted through different small jars until she found the one she was looking for.

“After Owain destroyed their village, Ollie helped many of them to settle here,” she said. For a moment, her hands froze in mid-air with a jar half opened as she forced herself to keep her tone even and conversational. “By the time you and Liam started your campaign, he’d already begun work on a place for the refugees to settle.”

“Ashlynn, I…” Loman started, almost reflexively apologizing, but the words died on his tongue before he could even speak them. He’d started to say that he was sorry, but was he? He still carried a belly full of anger over the way the Eldritch had wounded so many of Liam Dunn’s men, and the only thing that had stopped it from turning into a slaughter had been Loman’s tireless work in the healer’s tent.

“You don’t need to apologize, Brother-in-law,” Ashlynn said, deliberately emphasizing their relationship, even though it felt strange for her to hold on to her position as Owain’s wife after her husband had tried to murder her.

“This war is older than either of us,” she said as her hands started moving again, adding the last of the finely ground spices to the pot and starting to stir. “For a time, we were on opposite sides of that war. But I want to believe that we aren’t doomed to be on opposite sides of that war forever.”

“If people like you and I can forge a peace, then the common folk will follow,” she said, more because she wished things would work out that way than from any real certainty. “We just have to show them that there are more things to gain from cooperation than there are from extermination.”

“I know that your family has wanted the jewels and precious metals of Airgead Mountain for generations,” Ashlynn added. “But the skilled craftsmen among the Eldritch are an even greater treasure. I received these as gifts from the people, but how much do you think the barons of Lothian March would pay to have a table like the one in front of you? Or a chair like the one you’re sitting in?”

“I, I don’t know,” Loman said honestly. Whether it was as a lord or as a priest, he never thought much about the cost of fine furniture. It was simply part of his life, always present in the places he went and arranged for by the small army of servants that could be found in both temples and noble houses. “Dozens of sovereigns at least. Maybe hundreds if the maker was famous enough,” he said as he considered her words.

“Are the paintings and the tapestries the same?” Loman asked as he looked at the decorations on the walls. “Are the tapestries woven by another of the Eldritch clans? The ones we called ’spider-demons’,” he asked. Liam Dunn had given him a pointed warning to scrub the word ’demon’ from his vocabulary while he was here, but absent the label, Loman wasn’t quite certain how to refer to the different groups of Eldritch people that had been at war with his family for nearly a century.

He’d never once thought about the sort of art those people would create, but if his guess was right about the source of the work in Ashlynn’s chambers, then there really were amazing talents among the Eldritch, and the beautiful things they made couldn’t be exploited the way a vein of gold or silver could.

On most of the walls in Ashlynn’s sitting room, beautifully painted landscapes depicting the Vale of Mists at night, or moonlit pools deep in the woods, flanked intricate tapestries that felt like they offered glimpses into another world. A world where strange leaf-shaped boats floated long flooded city streets, or a churning river tumbled over the edge of a cliff, falling into an inky abyss as if the cliff had no bottom.

If there’d been a royal princess in the Kingdom of Gall at the moment, Loman imagined that her sitting room might barely match up to what he was seeing here, but somehow, he felt that such a room would drown in so much gilding, expensive lace curtains and glittering, jewel encrusted chandeliers that it would feel almost like a childish attempt to match up to the more mature sophistication on display here.

“No, those are different,” Ashlynn said with a smile on her lips that she couldn’t have hidden if she wanted to. “The paintings are Nyri’s, and the tapestries were woven by one of her progeny, Zedya. I don’t think either of them would ever sell their work. There are people among the Nightweaver clan who make things like Zedya’s tapestry,” Ashlynn added, hoping to shift the topic of conversation away from her vampire lover.

While Ashlynn wasn’t ashamed of her relationship with Nyrielle in any way, shape, or form, it somehow felt incredibly… rude to discuss her lover’s hobbies with the brother of the man she was still technically married to.

She needn’t have worried, though, because Loman’s attention had already been captured by something else in her sitting room.

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