Dubhaine Family/Moira/Roleplays/2009/April

April 17th - Westmoor

"I don't like this Moira," Yfain sat in the shade of her pavilion, his usually bluff demeanour replaced by furrowed brow and pursed lips, "We shouldn't be celebrating this dog's birthday."

"Do you think I hold any more love for Gregor than you? It was his treachery that cost the life of my friends Alexi and Lorrie Furion, not to mention my Imperial Cagilan Guards and of so many others. Civil War he called it, but in a democracy there is no place for steel in politics. No place."

"Then why are we here ma'am?" Iraen stopped the grinding wheel and looked up, though she was now chatelaine of the Dubhaine Estates in Oporto she still insisted on checking Moira's weapons and armour personally.

"To celebrate Fontan's survival my friends. Gregor plotted and schemed in secret for so long, a fat spider at the heart of a web of treachery, and yet even with all his connections - all his power and influence - he couldn't unseat the democratically elected government of Fontan," she paused, seemingly watching the knights practising in the lists, her mind's eye drifting back to that sunny day in Pedrera before the southern war.

She couldn't blame Perdan or Caligus for their decision to make war, it was the nature of Kingdoms to hunger for new conquests. But Gregor. No matter how she tried to connect the dots, she couldn't understand how he'd been able to commit so great a crime. Had his faith in democracy failed him? It seemed he was now content to serve a Queen, to bend his knee in homage as no knight of Fontan ever would, to kiss the proffered ring and swear allegiance not as an equal in arms but as a lesser kind of man.

Moira knew she could never do that. The ring of her steel was sovereignty enough for her, and within it she would accept no superior.

"You've got to admit it was a pretty piss poor government though that lead us to that," Yfain's wolfish grin reasserted itself as he remembered the torrent of letters and abuse in those last few weeks.

"Aye, a piss poor government indeed," Moira turned to the stack of correspondence on her campaign table, "but that's ever the way. The day we lose faith in democracy just because it allows idiots to rise to positions of power is the day we give up on the whole human race."

"How's that sword coming along Iraen?" it was the same wolf's head blade that Aeneas had presented to her, a token of reconciliation. She'd never had much time for his politics but damn if she hadn't admired the old Duke's integrity: too bad he'd succumbed to fever in the poisonous air of Kazan...