Side Story 5.8: Veeras Travel and Baron Kirka's Own Preparations
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Golden Spoon
When people said someone was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, they were speaking metaphorically. In the Richmond household, the spoon was gold. An actual gold was used in its creation. Molded precisely into the shape of a spoon, finished to a shine that caught the light in a way that made absolutely certain every person in the room understood what they were looking at. This was not ostentatious living as a description. It was ostentatious living as a documented, physical fact that sat in a drawer in the family's dining room and had been used at ceremonial meals since before Veera was born.
She was the patriarch's daughter. She had grown up in a house where the servants were well-dressed, where the households wine stock was never from last season, and the concept of settling for something adequate had not been given a vocabulary to exist in. She had traveled before, in the family's vessels, in the private compartments reserved for the family's use, where the beds had linen that cost more per thread than some people earned in a week and the food was prepared by cooks whose entire professional identity was organized around Veera's family's preferences.
She thought about all of this as she leaned over the railing of a cargo ship and was thoroughly, completely, and repeatedly vomiting sick bile into the ocean.
It had been Mr. Davis's suggestion, which meant it was the right suggestion even if it was the worst possible experience of her life so far. Her personal butler, bodyguard, and caretaker had been with the family long enough to understand both how to serve them and how to protect them, and in this particular situation protecting Veera meant ensuring she could not be traced through the docks before her father's people started looking in that direction. The luxurious vessels were out of the question. Every porter, every ticket clerk, every dock official who saw a young Richmond woman boarding a ship with luggage that cost more than their monthly wage would remember it. The family had enough connections in enough ports that word would travel faster than the ship could lift its anchors and sail to its destined route.
So they went with the humble cargo vessel, one with no artistic engravings and no excessive luxuries.
It was not a small ship, nor was it purely a cargo ship in the sense of having no passenger accommodation at all. It carried cargo as its primary function and had, in a secondary capacity, accommodation for people who could not afford anything better or who had reasons to be unnoticeable that outweighed their preference for comfort. The crew was professional in the way that crews on working vessels were professional: competent, efficient, and entirely uninterested in the private circumstances of anyone who paid the passage fee and did not cause problems.
The problems for Veera were not of the causing variety. They were of the experiencing variety.
The clothing was the first thing. Mr. Davis had procured common working clothes for all four of them, Veera, her two maidservants Letti and Pren, and himself. What Veera was wearing could charitably be described as fabric with structural aspirations. It covered her, which was the extent of its accomplishments. It did not breathe in the way she understood clothing to breathe. It did not move with her. It had the particular texture of something that had been washed in salt water enough times that the distinction between the cloth and a piece of rope had become philosophical rather than practical. Her skin, which had never known a rough surface in its life, was in active disagreement with the situation.
The food was the second thing. She had eaten food that had no particular flavor before, in the sense that she had eaten things that were not to her preference and had set them aside. This was different. This was food whose entire existence seemed oriented around not being anything in particular, a kind of culinary nihilism expressed through boiled grain and salt. Just salt. Not multiple seasonings in which salt appeared. Salt, and then grain, and then the memory of salt.
The sea itself was the third thing, and the third thing was by far the worst. The central eastern river had been manageable, the cargo ship moving through the great river corridor with the flat stability of something on a surface that was not actively trying to become a different shape, with no massive waves to speak of. The southern ocean of Central Arkanus, which the old maritime charts called the Dorsuen, had different views on what a surface should be doing. The ship moved through it with the rolling, pitching, corkscrew quality that vessels with cargo weight distributed across their lower sections moved through open ocean swells, which is to say it moved constantly and in too many directions simultaneously for Veera's body to select a single response and commit to it.
Mr. Davis had purchased medicine beforehand. It helped, somewhat. It did not help enough, but still it helped to alleviate her major discomforts, and without it the journey would have been categorically unsurvivable rather than merely requiring periodic visits to the railing. He had also been thoughtful enough to pack their supplies in a section of the cargo hold that was accessible to them and contained, among other things, better medicine than what they could buy at ports of call along the route. This was the primary reason they had chosen this particular cargo vessel. The ship was already carrying a portion of the supplies they needed. The rest came from their own stores.
They kept to their cabin when not required to be on deck. The cabin was a room in the technical sense of being a defined space with walls and a door, which exhausted the meaningful comparison to the rooms Veera had inhabited previously. She and Letti and Pren shared it while Mr. Davis occupied a smaller space adjacent. They wore their rough clothes and ate their salt-grain meals and did not behave in any way that would distinguish them from people who traveled this way because they had no alternative.
Veera had been told, at some point in her life, that a person's character was revealed by adversity. She was discovering that this was true, and that what the adversity was revealing about her character was that she had considerably more resilience than the version of herself that had existed three weeks ago would have predicted. She was miserable. She was also not turning around just to end her current suffering. If this was the worst she could experience while on her way to somewhere unknown, then it was better than marrying that slob of a man.
The route they were taking could be described as a large U, almost rectangular if you mapped it honestly. From the eastern coastal ports through the southern ocean corridor, then up through the great central western river toward the northern territories. They were now navigating the coastal lines of the Sovereignty of Arwen, which meant they were approaching a docking point where they would disembark, continue overland, and then find transport that was going north.
The ship would complete its rectangle circuit without them.
Veera stood at the railing as the Arwenian coastline became visible, and looked at the shape of the land coming out of the morning haze, and thought about what she was doing with the particular clarity that only extended physical discomfort produces in people who have had enough time to stop reacting to their circumstances and start actually examining them.
She was still going. Her mind was set on it even more firmly now. No, she would not accept any loss at this point. That was not how merchants profited. That was the examination's conclusion.
Mr. Davis appeared beside her with a cup of something warm that smelled better than anything else on the ship, which he had apparently been hoarding for a sufficiently terrible moment.
"This is the coast of Arwen, Miss Richmond," he said, with the tone of a man who had served the family for decades and understood that certain moments required neither advice nor comfort but simply presence.
She accepted the cup. It was decent tea, which in context was extraordinary.
"Thank you, Mr. Davis," she said.
"Of course, Miss Richmond."
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Baron Kirka's Preparations
While Veera was navigating the Arwenian coast and counting the days until she would be standing on something that no longer moves or sways, the village of Kirka on the other hand was already doing what villages do when they have been given back their purpose and the people who made them worth having have returned home: it was becoming itself again, the streets and homes, the smiles of the people and the genuine laughter of everyone living here was so vibrant and beautiful to look at.
Baron Kirka had returned some months ago, which was the event that had signaled to the remaining loyal residents — those who had stayed through the bandit occupation and the lawlessness that followed — that the waiting was over. The recently promoted Captain Gareth Rufus, who was now the Village Chief would now manage the village during any of the Baron's absences, and no one could argue that he had actually earned that position through everything he had done during the occupation. He was the one who had spent years maintaining the thread of legitimate authority through sheer stubbornness and the loyalty of a handful of old soldiers who had refused to leave, and when he had handed command back to the Baron upon his arrival with the expression of someone setting down a weight they had been carrying longer than was reasonable and had carried anyway because someone had to. The Baron had then surprisingly handed a portion of it back to him, because that was the kind of trust that could only be given to someone who had already proven they deserved it.
What followed was the kind of village revival that happens when resources, leadership, and genuine community investment arrive simultaneously. Baron Kirka used his personal wealth, which was considerable and had become more so through his exclusive trade relationship with Maya's Traveling Mercantile, to fund the initial reconstruction. Former residents who had fled the occupation began returning when word reached them that the Baron was back and the bandits were eradicated in their entirety. The surrounding area was cleared of the bandit camps that had been making the approaches to Kirka unpredictable, a task accomplished through combined effort between the Baron's forces, the returning villagers, and the kind of motivated efficiency that people bring to the removal of things that have been making their lives worse for years.
The streets filled back up. Children who had grown up elsewhere came back with their parents, and children who had been born during the exile and never seen Kirka came to it for the first time and immediately began behaving as though they owned it, which was the correct instinct for children in a place their family called home. The market stalls reopened. The community gathering spaces that had been occupied by bandit leadership during the occupation returned to their original functions. The color had returned to a place that had lost its original luster. It was vibrant and beautiful to look at.
Baron Kirka had stood in the village square one morning, watching all of this happen, and smiled widely. It was the smile of a man who had not allowed himself to fully believe this would ever happen again and was now being shown that all of it was true. He smiled for a very long time and nobody dared to interrupt him.
His position in the economic corridor between his village of Kirka, Maya Village, and the broader region of the Kingdom of Ogind above them had not gone unnoticed, including by himself. The exclusive arrangement with Maya's Traveling Mercantile had made premium forest products available in Kirka, which had made merchants curious about Kirka Village, which had brought more foot traffic than the village had seen in its best years, which had made the village's recovery considerably faster than any recovery on equivalent resources alone would have been. He was not a man who undervalued good timing, and he recognized that his friendship with August Finn, built originally on simple commerce and shared circumstances, had become one of the more strategically advantageous relationships a frontier baron could have.
He thought about this without cynicism, because he genuinely liked August and the village, and the advantage was mutual rather than extracted. That was the best kind of deal any merchant could have. A genuine friendship with the right person brings more wealth than any calculated arrangement, and he had lived enough of his life to know the difference.
The preparation for the diplomatic meeting was the occasion he had not anticipated when the year began. The Crown Prince of Ogind visiting Kirka, and the leadership of Maya Village doing the same, with his village as the meeting ground between them — this was the kind of thing that a frontier baron experienced perhaps once in their lifetime if they were very lucky and had done the right things at the right moments. Kirka was the middle point between the two territories, geographically sensible for both parties as neutral ground for their very first talks, and its recent revitalization meant it could receive delegations of this significance without looking like a place where a disaster had previously occurred.
He had arranged everything that could be arranged. The guest accommodations were prepared, which required some creativity given the village's still-recovering infrastructure but which the Baron's personal resources had resolved adequately. The market square had been cleaned and decorated in the manner appropriate for a formal meeting, which in practical terms meant thorough cleaning and the removal of anything that communicated ongoing reconstruction. The food preparation was in the hands of the best cooks the village had, supplemented by ingredients sourced specifically for this occasion from Maya Village's supply chain.
The security arrangements were the Baron's most thorough preparation. He had his own forces, now reconstituted and properly equipped. The diplomatic protocol of the meeting meant he could not position armed men in a way that looked threatening to either arriving delegation, but he could position them in a way that communicated that Kirka was a settled, protected place where the business of serious people could be conducted without concern for their environment.
His impression of Crown Prince Olfeco was favorable, formed across several encounters over the years. The Prince had charm without being hollow about it, which was rarer than it sounded among nobility. He had the political instincts that came from genuine engagement with governance rather than the performed version that most people tended to show. His martial capability was adequate, which was a fair assessment of a prince whose primary function was statesmanship rather than combat. The rumors about his personal life that circulated through the principality's social networks were the kind that attached to men of his station almost as a matter of protocol, and Baron Kirka's view on them was simple: if they did not affect his governance, they were his own affair. The succession question was more pointed, given that the king had only one child, but that was a concern for the kingdom's advisors to manage, not a frontier baron's responsibility to worry about.
King Orcises Ogind the Forty-Ninth was by most assessments the strongest king the kingdom had produced since its founding generations, ruling with the competence and stability that produced genuine prosperity rather than just the appearance of it. The kingdom was not perfect, and no kingdom was, but it was functioning and growing, and the common people who lived in it had reasons to believe that tomorrow was another day to look forward to. That was worth more than anything for those ordinary folks, and it spoke to what kind of king actually sat on that throne.
The messenger bird from the Prince's retinue had arrived two days ago, carrying word that they were approaching the border territory. A separate messenger who came through the trade network confirmed that the Maya Village delegation was two to three days out.
Baron Kirka read both messages in his study and then set them down side by side on his desk and looked at them together for a moment, because looking at them together communicated something that either one alone did not: that this was actually happening. The thing he had hoped might happen when the liberation of Kirka was complete and the village was able to breathe again was now an imminent reality with specific timelines attached to it. He had thought about it for some time, how the kingdom might be able to cultivate a more favorable friendship with August's village. He had already felt it firsthand in the way the partnership had benefited Kirka, and now it seemed even his prayers were being answered on a larger scale.
He stood up and went to the window that looked out over the village square.
A child was chasing a dog through the market. Two old men were sitting in front of the grain merchant's stall having the kind of argument that only longtime neighbors have, comfortable and chronic and requiring no resolution. A woman was hanging washing on the line strung between the buildings along the eastern lane, and the colors of it caught the light in the way laundry does on a clear morning.
Baron Kirka watched all of this and felt his smile reaching practically to his ears, which was not a dignified expression for a man of his station and was also the only available response to the situation.
The meeting between the Royal house of Ogind and Maya Village was about to happen. His friends and his crown prince would occupy the same space for the first time, in his village, under his hospitality, and something that would shape the relationships between these three parties for the foreseeable future would begin here.
He hoped it would go well. He was reasonably confident it would. And he was, in ways he did not have any tidy language for, deeply glad to be the person hosting such a commemorative event. He truly believed this would prove to be one of the most fruitful partnerships the kingdom could have entered into in recent memory, and that it had begun here, in his village, in a place that had once been given up for lost, felt like something worth every difficult thing that had led to this morning.