Morning Meetings


Paige is awakened early, per her own instructions, so that she can arrive in the castle on time for tea with Vialle and the other ladies. Folly rises with her so that she can join Paige and Merlin for breakfast.

After Folly and Paige are dressed and ready to face the day, they send someone to knock on Merlin's door. He joins them in a few minutes, dressed in different clothes than the ones he had on the night before, and generally fresh and ready to face the day himself.

Merlin says, "I took the liberty of inviting Martin to join us. He said he was at the Red Mill, wherever that is, and that he would join us as soon as he was dressed." He sounds mildly miffed about something or other. "I was left with the impression that their bathing facilities are not adequate, so I suggested he make use of yours, Paige. I hope you do not mind terribly."

Paige smiles and pours herself a glass of water. "Inadequate? Poor Martin, forced to bathe with someone else was he?" Her smile suggests she almost enjoys deciphering Merlin's confusion or perhaps the idea that his Trump interrupted Martin's time with Violet.

She offers a glass to Merlin and one for Folly if she'd like. She's been all smiles this morning, humming soft tunes to her self as she flits around the room. She's dressed sensibly for the season and Amber's current social scene.

Folly, whose mood had echoed Paige's until now, is suddenly strangely quiet. She accepts the glass from Paige without a word and stares into it as she swirls the water around.

After a few moments she looks up again. "Are you gonna tell him, Paige?"

"Tell who?" Paige asks, not wholly here. "Martin?"

Folly doesn't say anything nor change her facial expression, but the answer is obviously 'yes'.

"I suppose, but I don't know if this morning's the right time. Troublemaker and Syd have priority I think," Paige answers, looking at Folly for understanding of her silence.

One corner of Folly's mouth quirks into a faint smile at the codenames, but she still seems distant. She nods, slowly and thoughtfully.

Folly will, Paige knows, carry a secret to her grave for her friends if she has to. It's just that sometimes she'd rather not have to, especially when it involves keeping a secret from Martin. Or from Paige, for that matter.

"But of course you will tell Martin this morning," says Merlin, chiding. "Why else would I have summoned him to breakfast if not to give you the chance to tell him now? Do you wish him to learn of your children from someone else?"

He doesn't seem to have missed the 'Syd' bit, either, although he has put the question of who that might be on the back burner.

Folly certainly isn't making any effort to explain it, either. She tries not to look sheepish about it.

"Merlin makes a good point," she says. "If you want him to find out from you rather than from someone else, sooner is better than later."

Folly falls silent again, but the 'if' continues to hang in the air around them, a question waiting to be answered.

"Well, that shouldn't be an issue, as the only people that know right now are in this room, right?" Paige looks a little miffed that she's being tag-teamed, but the hurt expression doesn't change her tone.

Still with a upward turn of her lips, Paige says, "We're talking about something that can still be best measured in hours here. I think I could use some time to talk to people who'll have influence on any decisions before I tell anyone else."

Merlin gets that set to his jaw again.

Folly just nods in acceptance of Paige's decision.

"Martin won't react well to this," Paige says to Merle. "And while I'm still a bit concerned, I'm not sure I want to fight about it already. I've got nine months and the rest of their lives to do that."

"I think," says Merlin, "that you give Martin insufficient credit--" and he breaks off, getting that distant stare that Paige knows and Folly is learning means that someone has contacted him by Trump. "Just a moment," he says to whoever is not there, and looks at Paige, as if to say _Shall I bring him through or not?_

Paige closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly as if centering herself. With a little shake of her head she smiles, _Yes, of course._

She straightens her dress and smoothes her skirt before laying her hands gently in her lap and turning to Folly. "Maybe Martin'll know the best way to approach him." Paige chuckles, "Or have ideas on finding myself a husband."

"Oh, I've got ideas about that," Folly says, the sparkle returning to her eyes, "and they can all be summed up in two words: Don't Bother."

She's grinning, but she's not actually looking at Paige. Her eyes are fixed on Merlin. Trump travel is still a new and exciting thing to her, and her face is aglow with anticipation and curiosity as she watches for the new arrival.

"For their sake, I've got to consider it, Folly," Paige answers. "Unless you were suggesting I hide it from the King, and that I definitely couldn't do, not totally. I'm almost afraid to go to tea today. For a blind bitch she sees rather well at times."

As Folly and Paige continue speaking, Merlin extends his hand and says, "Come through."

Suddenly Martin is there, with one hand in Merlin's and a bundle of clothing under one arm. He looks even more rumpled than usual, but he seems refreshed after the previous day's--or week's, in his case--exertions. Either that or he has already hit the coffee very hard.

"Good morning, ladies," he says. Looking at Paige, he continues, "I think you should change the subject or I may lose my appetite for breakfast."

"Morning, you lug," Paige smiles. "I don't know that the other subject we've been talking about will do your stomach any better," she apologizes before she begins.

Getting up and pouring him a cuppa, she smiles, "Guess I should start out by explaining that this isn't a joke."

She looks him in the eyes, almost as if she were asking his forgiveness or consent or something, "Long story short. I'm pregnant. The twins are Daeon's."

Martin's eyes widen fractionally as he takes the cup, then they dart to Folly.

"Yes, apparently yet another member of the family thinks he's a sex-god," Folly interjects with a smirk, trying to lighten the mood and convey the 'it was an accident' part all in one shot. The jest doesn't hide her own tenseness, though.

Merlin says, "I scried to ensure she would survive the business of reproduction, and I saw that she would have two offspring. She seems to have gained mass rather than lost it; is that normal?"

Martin opens his mouth as if to say something, then drains his cup and sets it down on a nearby table. Then he says, "I know you've wanted children for a long time; I hope they make you very happy." And he offers Paige a cousinly embrace.

Paige smiles and returns it, perhaps hesitating a moment, seeing the path past "cousinly" toward "kissing-cousinly" but determined not to make a scene, she releases him.

Pouring herself another glass of juice she begins explaining. "Yes, I've wanted this, but not this way. A little too late, eh?"

Explaining to Merlin, "Yes, Merlin I will gain weight, but I wouldn't suggest phrasing it that way around other women. I'm unsure how it's viewed in Chaos, but to nourish the developing children I will put on some extra pounds. With a little exercise and some judicious Pattern usage, it should be of minor concern."

Martin adds by way of explanation: "Remember, Amberites don't practice fissile reproduction." Merlin nods, and looks thoughtful, clearly trying to fit this all in with other information he's learned about Amberite reproduction.

"Of course the Pattern was of little use in preventing this. Gods know I didn't have any inclination. It seems cousin Adonis has some sort of Power that is stronger than that which has kept me without child for the last century," Paige comments.

Martin shakes his head. "You've had baby-lust for years, Paige. Your subconscious can affect your use of the Pattern, especially if there's something blocking or counteracting your conscious use."

"Now I'm really glad I didn't take him up on his offer," Folly says. She smiles, glances at Martin almost against her will, and then quickly returns her gaze to the contents of her glass.

Martin glances back at Folly. "He was hitting up on you when I showed up, wasn't he? Christ, and I thought I had a bad reputation for hitting up on women."

Folly just grins at that.

At about this point the trays laden with breakfast are brought in, and the four of you sit down to eat.

Spearing a piece of broccoli from the center of her omlet, Paige asks, "Well, I'm will to entertain suggestions on how to break this to the King and opinions on whether it's feasible to arrange a marriage of convenience in the next two weeks."

Chewing on the egg-veggie-cheese mixture, she thinks for a moment. "It's too bad Alain hasn't pressed for his divorce, yet."

"Gerard wouldn't have granted it. And Dad really can't do anything about it until after the coronation anyway." Martin glances at Merlin, and adds, "Alain LeClaire is married, but he loves Paige, so he'd like to divorce his wife and marry Paige."

"But," Merlin starts to say, and then thinks better of it, and takes a forkful of omelette of his own and eats it as Page continues. Something of the nicety of his manner suggests that Martin had the teaching of him in this.

Folly glances at Merlin like she's about to say something, but then Paige continues...

"I beleive Worth's out. He's in enough of a huff that he's requesting to be put back to sea, so he doesn't have to be near me." She seems to try, but the hurt is evident.

Martin has a drink of his coffee, which prevents the need for an immediate answer.

"Maybe he just needs some time to cool off," Folly offers. The words are mild, but there's a spark behind her eyes.

Paige's eyes answer, _Maybe not_, before she can regain her good mood and reflect Folly's spark.

She sets her fork aside and continues, "Look, Paige, maybe you're right, maybe the best thing is for you to get married at the earliest possible moment to the first person you can talk into such a thing, but...."

Paige smiles. //Oh, this should be good//, she thinks to herself.

Folly pauses for a moment, then shrugs. "Given a choice between malicious gossip and a bad marriage, I know which one I'd pick. You're of the royal house of Amber, Paige. As much as I hate being classist about this, it does give you a certain advantage. How many times has Flora been married - or Fiona, or Deirdre? They made the choices that were right for them, and I don't hear anyone giving them shit for it. You've gotta do what's right for you, sweetheart."

"And given my record for relationships, one would assume it's due a bad marriage? Thanks for the support. I knew I could count on you three." The smile and good anture of her voice take the sting out of her sarcasm.

Folly's look says _That's not what I meant_, but it's more joking than disgruntled. She lets Paige continue:

"I may be my Father's daughter, but I'm also a product of a society where women's worth was counted by the same idiotic standards that this city does. I suppose it's always been myself that I'm fighting against, eh? What a hypocrite." She downs another glass of juice, shaking her head with a wry smile. "But I'm not a princess who acknowledged grown children when Amber was in need of Royals and then asked the society to accept them on their own merits."

Turning to Martin, "I think child lust sounds a bit offensive, but yes, I've thought about it for years. But if I had enough subconcious control over Shadow to help this along, Harmony would be a but a holiday visit by Lucas and Solace to the Vesper family plot." _Not to mention that Folly might be Queen._

"Don't ill-wish," says Martin, half-under his breath.

Folly shivers slightly.

"I'm going to put some things in motion over the next day or two. I think I'll be moving toward the outskirts of the city and getting my own place. I'll let you all know when I know more."

"The castle is very crowded," says Merlin, sounding like he's trying to be practical about it all. "Certainly it would be easier to defend your own place against sorcerous intrusion. But I suspect the castle has defenses of its own." He frowns. "If you marry, will not your husband expect you to live with him?"

"I've enough position that whoever I marry, should it come to that, I can hopefully make some of the decisions in my own household. Where it will be located, hopefully, will be one of those," Paige explains.

"I've two different places I'm looking at, so it's not even decided yet, but the important parts are underway... my staff."

"Make sure you include a trustworthy bodyguard. And Liam." Martin advises. "You need to be careful, especially with servants you don't know. Jerod and I had a discussion about security and compromising information," and here he looks at Folly, "and how anything you'd really hate to have fall into the wrong person's hands should probably be burned."

Merlin nods his agreement between bites of omelet.

Folly nods, too. She looks sad and distant.

It occurs to Paige that if she doesn't hurry up, she'll be late for tea.

She dabs a napkin daintily at the corners of her mouth, as she rises and pulls on a bell rope. "I'll keep that in mind, but..."

Her thought stalls as there's a knock on the door, "Yes, Lady Sommers?"

"Ask Miles to bring around my carriage, if you please, Quill," Paige orders, sliding her Trumps into a skirt pocket.

"Yes, we'll have to talk more on that," _and this_, "later. Trump me when you have time?" she says to Martin.

Martin nods, once.

Leaning over and kissing Folly on the cheek, "I'll see you later. Wish me luck with the ladies."

This brings Folly back to the here-and-now. She grins up at Paige, her eyes twinkling with mirth at the unspoken, smart-ass reply.

"Merle, remind me we have to talk on sorcerous protections for local abodes, eh?" He gets a kiss too, "And really, thank-you."

"You are always welcome, Paige," Merlin says.

Martin gets a kiss on the cheek, too. "Don't want you to feel left out," she winks.

Martin smiles.

And with that she spins out the door like a little red tornado, humming what Folly might recognize as Shadow Earth lullabies, again.


In the morning after the family dinner Ossian arrives a tad too early to the room with the yellow chairs, and sits down, making a few sketches, waiting for Bleys.

[OOC: I assume Bleys is a bit late?]

Bleys arrives within five minutes of the appointed time, which is pretty good for a shadow where clocks don't work.

[This is before the tea, so don't do anything that would make him turn you into a toad! We'd have to retcon your walking up to hopping up...]

[I'll try my best.]

Bleys has a very large cup of coffee. "Good morning. I hope you slept well?"

"I did." Ossian grins "Were you comfortable in your new room?

"I have a question for you, but you asked me yesterday, so I guess I should start by answering your question. What do you want to hear about?"

"Everything, nephew, but I am interested primarily in you, this morning. My brother was a traitor and a conspirator and did not, in the end, side against those who would destroy the world. He is dead and I stood with those who killed him and would have killed him myself had I had the opportunity.

"But family is family and I am his next-of-kin." Bley pauses. "Well, except for Brennan, but I don't think he's going to have the same concerns that I will."

Bleys takes a rather large, not-particularly-quiet, slurp from his coffee cup.

"As I was saying, I want to know about you. Where you came from, what my brother meant to you, what he taught you, and how you've fared."

"I take it you aren't here to listen to a story, but to gather information?" Ossian asks, perhaps sounding a tiny bit disappointed.

"Not at all," says Bleys. "I'm interested in a number of stories. Yours is one of them. My brother Brand's is another."

"I can't help you much with Brand's story, but I can tell you mine."

Ossian starts his tale: "My first years was spent at an orphanage somewhere out there. Not a bad place, actually I suspect someone put a lot of money into it. Then one day, when I was five or six years old, or something like that a man came to the orphanage. He told me he was my Uncle Brand, and that he would see to my well-being from now on. I didn't ask him very much, but I was thrilled by the prospect of going away with my uncle."

"So he took me on a trip through Shadow, and we visited a lot of places. What I found even then was a certain edge of the places where we paused. They always seemed more perfect than the places we passed through."

"That's interesting. Any scheme to it? Now that you're an adult and he's...gone, what do you think he was trying to show you?"

"I could have chosen that route to teach someone some finer points of beauty. He might have had that in mind, at least partly. But probably he wanted to prove the existence of perfection to me. I think he failed miserably." Ossian folds his hands behind his neck. "There is no such thing as perfection."

"Not in the platonic sense, no. Unless Dworkin asks, and then you should agree with whichever position he holds at the moment. Other than that, did you learn anything else that he did not intend to teach you?"

"I was only a little boy at that time; it is not easy to know what he wanted to teach me. I have found that he overvalued his own importance in his designs, at least in my taste." Ossian shrugs "But that was later. During that trip he was my god."

"Yes, he did always have a problem with self-importance. It's an occupational risk of being a scion of Amber, I think.

"Let's jump to the other end of things. I may have more questions about your time with Brand later. How has Amber treated you?" He seems sincerely interested and you wonder if asking this question was the main reason he wanted to speak with you.

"Fairly well, I guess. Of course, not being able to draw any Trumps for five years was a disappointment." Ossian laughs "But most of the cousins have been nice."

"Though I have the feeling I am not the most trusted among the cousins, due to my association with Brand. Although I couldn't know it at that time it was a bad idea asking for Brand at my arrival."

[Bleys]
"Yes, the ones who were howling for Brand were at the other end of the universe at the time. And I think that the five years without access to Trumps was, in the end, a lesser cost than some we could have paid.

"Did you say that you had questions you wished to ask of me?"

"First I was wondering about Shadows. As Random wants me to solve the trump problem, have started to think about Shadows where time flows faster than here; maybe Me and some of the other artists could go to such a place to paint new Trumps? You are probably one of the most well-traveled persons in the family. Do you know if there are any stable shadows with such a rapid time flow that it would help us."

"Time differential is one of the standard measures of radial distance from Amber. Isochronal bands are roughly equidistant in terms of effort required to attain them by any of the four known shadow traversal methods. The greater the dilation effect, the greater the effort required to overcome it. And that assumes we're talking about a stable isochrone. Closer to Chaos, beyond the primary inflection point, the t/tau factor becomes a variable and time stops being a constant and is a regular or irregular variable." He shudders, apparently at the thought of it.

He sounds amazingly like Brand did when Brand was either teaching you or testing you. You suspect that he is trying to see what Brand taught you about Shadow.

Ossian looks like he has to process some of the words rather thouroughly before getting their meaning. This view of Shadow might be new to him.

"Or, the short answer is that it could be done, but we can't find a place that's too distant, because it might be too unstable. It would be easy to give you years while we spend months. It would be harder to give you years while we spent moments. And none of that is considering the likelihood that any number of dangers that are lurking for us, such as my dear mother, might take advantage of your distance and our inability to respond to impose upon you."

Bleys is grinning as he says the above.

"How much time do you need?" he asks, suddenly businesslike.

Ossian shrugs.

"Depends on how much Random wants done, of course. To create Trumps enough for some essential two-way communication lines in sensibly short time, I still would need about a year per week. For the next half year or so.

"On the other hand I have another idea I shall try out first."

"We should investigate other options. Twenty-five years of your time making trumps is a hard penance to impose on someone for possessing a useful talent. And I think it would be...unsafe in other ways, as well."

"Could painting be considered as a penance?" Ossian seems not to understand.

"However, we might be able to cut that down by letting more than one trump artist work on this project, if it marches with the King's pleasure. A good question. Did you have another?"

"I think those twenty-five years includes using some of the other Trump artists too. And it is a very rough estimate."

[Bleys]
"We'll probably keep it as a backup plan, then."

[Ossian]
"Another question. Yes. About Brand, I think. What did he think about his brothers and sisters?

"Brand..." he says, drawing on a cigarette he didn't have but now seems to. "Brand I think was the most vulnerable of us all to the playing card fallacy. You know the myth, all of us as strong, unchanging representatives of particular aspects of the universal image mirrored in the pattern and the cards.

"He embraced this, and it led him to believe that the right way to behave was to try to manipulate the cards to let him change the deal. He lost his perspective and stopped thinking of us as people. Not that he couldn't fake it well, but my brother was solipsistic via his embrace of the sociopathy most of us fight all our lives to avoid.

"He was probably genuinely fond of Mother, though.

"It's one of the reasons I find you so interesting. I wonder what it was in you that kept my brother from being his normal charming self."

"He must have been planning somthing. I don't think it ever came to fruition, though." Ossian is quiet for a second or so. "You know, the day he took me to the Pattern, he was really, really hurried. Basically he just put me on the Pattern, and then left. That was the last time I saw him."

"I wonder if he'd learned anything new, then."

"Or, maybe I was the only one who took him seriously?"

"Hardly. Did you ever meet Clarissa? He could do no wrong in her eyes. When we have time, I'd like to see where he raised you, to see if there are any clues as to what he was doing. Probably should be sooner rather than later, for your safety. My brother was capable of quite a bit more than most of us, and I wouldn't put it past him to have set something up that isn't really in your best interests."

"I never met the lady. Did anyone else except her an me take him seriously?"

"You think his plans for me really would catch me, even now that he is dead? That would be good planning indeed. But we could try to find where he raised me, there can be other answers in those places too, if we are able to find them. I don't know if I am."

"Do you think he wasn't capable of it? I thought you said you took him seriously."

"I never saw him doing anything that would indicate he was that powerful. Then of course I mostly saw what he wanted me to see."

"He plotted for over a century to depose not just dad but Dworkin and everything, and he almost made it. I think anyplace that he might have left information will be well protected.

"You may be a trap for me, to lead me to a dangerous place. Brand certainly would have known that I would follow up if he lost and I survived."

Ossian furrows his brow. He is sceptic.

Bleys shrugs, and continues.

"He was discounted, perhaps, by a handful of my brothers who didn't understand the differences between power and military power. Funny, that. What really prevailed was neither his magical acumen nor the might of Amber's martial sons."

Bleys has that look again. Another measuring question is coming. "Why do you think Brand failed?"

"Aside from military decisions?" Ossian leans back in his chair. "Perfectionism and a skew self-esteem. If he had been willing to compromise a little bit in his vision of Amber he could have been able to get more allies here. Also if he hadn't thought his own role in his new Amber was crucial, things could also have been easier for him."

"Exactly. In the end it was the network of social obligations, duties, and loyalties that Oberon set up that saved his Kingdom. Oh, granted, it wasn't what he planned, but it was one of several lines of defense. It's always better, in this family, to grant a favor than to beg one.

"It occurs to me that your generation will come of age learning lessons of strength through unity, whereas mine learned the strength of self-reliance. Are you familiar with any of those shadows which has subsequent generations of gods eating their parents? Do please warn me if a conspiracy of youngsters decides to rid the universe of a batch of troublesome princes." Bleys smiles warmly as he says the last.

Ossian laughs. "Sure. I've never hear of those shadows before. I wonder why Brand never showed them to me." The last is said with some irony.

Bleys shrugs. "Perhaps I've just made them up. There's a valid, if solipsistic, model of Shadow and Reality that claims that shadows don't exist until we think of them. Some days, Brand talked as if he believed it."

"He never talked much to me about such things. It seems he wanted me to focus on Trumps. I have a lot to catch up with in the realms of the Pattern and Shadows."

"We still have some way to go before we get united, I believe. I mean, my generation has been under about the same amount of pressure as your these last years. And you seem at least as well united as we are. When the pressure becomes smaller, who knows what will happen?"

"Some of us have had a greater...incentive for unity. It's a shift that a student of royal progeny can watch progress through Father's offspring sets across the years. You'll find that your older uncles are much less interdependent than your younger ones. I'd like to think that that is mother's good influence on the family."

"If so, it was purely accidental. But our family were forced by circumstance to learn other ways to be strong. One of those ways has been looking after each other's interests."

"Then; are you united as a whole or just in small groups? I have heard lots of different things during the last five years, but everything has been second-hand knowledge, at the best. I mean, sure some of you are interdependent; but as far as I know there are lots of hard feelings here and there too."

"I think it's too soon to tell. Certainly no one will make an overt move before the Coronation. I can't decide if you children are a sign we're growing up, or a sign we're just as secretive as ever.

"You all are a canary in a coal mine. I'll start worrying if it goes badly for you."

"That will be a shaky prognosis method." Ossian says with a smile "I think many of us still makes sketches towards where they want to end up. Things will go bad now and then without reason for you to worry."

"Oh, Ossian? I hope that if you find that you need a sympathetic family member to discus issues with, you'll come to me. In fairness, you should get some of the advantage that goes with the liability of being Brand's last apprentice."

Bleys does not seem jovial or flip at all as he says this.

Why does everyone think it's a liability? Ossian thinks to himself. But the offer seems earnest. He says: "That is a generous offer. I will come to you. It will be very good to have an uncle to talk with again. I mean; Gerard is very nice and so, but his interests and way of thinking are rather far from mine, I fear."

Bleys grins. "I shall endeavor to be avuncular, then."

Ossian laughs. This is an uncle in his taste.

If Ossian doesn't have anything more for Bleys, Bleys will excuse himself. As he leaves you see him putting on a hat of some sort.


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Last modified: 25 October 2002