Arcaea/Dining Hall Late 08-09/Harmony's Hopes
Harmony sipped her wine and stared into the campfire. There wasn’t anything else worth looking at in Arempos: it was a dusty, rocky land. Spring, with its green shoots and blossoms seemed to have completely passed it by. Even the goats—which seemed to be the herd animal of choice for the Arempion farmer—would have a hard time finding good grazing.
She wasn’t thinking about the goats, though; she was thinking about the men that she had killed in her first campaign.
It should have been harder.
A part of her brain had known that the men who found her blade were husbands and fathers…sons. But, she had ruthlessly packed that away. For this performance, she need only to know that her life was forfeit if she faltered. Harmony did wonder if their haunts would trouble her sleep, but somehow...she didn't think so.
Still…it should have been harder. Men were not monsters. Well, not usually. She shuddered despite the warmth of the fire. It was something that she hadn’t lost her nerve, at least. Harmony knew that she hadn’t been completely…rational…since…Siegfried. She looked fondly at her boots and wondered if they would be as comfortable for sleeping in if she had steel toes put in them like Arlian had.
Arlian.
Despite her dark thoughts, Harmony smiled at the thought of him. After all the tall, pretty warrior-types that had passed through her life, who would have thought that the one she would love, the one that she had been looking for, was a funny, homely bureaucrat a full inch or more shorter than she was! She did pity every woman who had ever looked at Arlian’s unimposing exterior and passed him by—never knowing the prize they were missing.
They had spent so many wonderful days together before the war began. Arlian surprising her everyday with his wicked humour and naked vulnerability…and who would expect that his beautiful, velvet eyes could see so much, or that an artist’s heart beat beneath that plain exterior.
Certainly not Edara. While her cousin had been thrilled with the gift that Harm and Arlian had presented to her, sighing over the verse engraved in the red-gold plaque:
Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.*
and, enthusing over the swirling spray of rubies and emeralds that twined around the letters, she had seemed somewhat skeptical that the idea—and main design—had sprung from Arlian’s practical mind.
Harmony wasn’t certain that Jenred had been as surprised, but she found the King hard to read at times. In his own way, he was as much of a performer as she was. She smiled to herself, except when he looked at Edara, then his feelings were plain for anyone to read. Did she look like that when her eyes were on Arlian?
Harmony poured the dregs of her wine onto the fire. Her men were nearly finished packing up the camp. Lantzas…and then Remton. Maybe…Arlian might be persuaded to leave Nocaneb to its own devices for a day or two and meet her there.
She missed him.
- Old Bill...from Hamlet
Lady Harmony Kindon (Dame of Nocaneb)
Harmony leaned back easily, staring off into the middle-distance whilst Jenkins read the latest dispatches from her steward. Abruptly she sat up frowning and raised a hand for him to stop.
“Those numbers from The House...that’s a...23% drop from last month...and we were off 12% the month before.”
Even though he had become somewhat adjusted to his lady’s surprising ability to keep seemingly endless facts and figures stored in her lovely head, Jenkins could still not help being impressed by her recall every time.
“It’s the war, milady; no custom.”
“Yes, yes,” Harmony nodded agreement, “Still...the drop is greater than I had calculated. Send a note to Quill, tell him to ‘count the house and shake the till’. I trust Viviaine, but there’s plenty about that I put less stock in who might have light fingers. Oh...and while you’re at it, ask him where my bloody reports on the new enterprise are!”
She shook her head thoughtfully at him, “We are going to have to find a manager. Quill’s never going to give me any kind of reasonable reports, and he’s too much of an artist to handle money—almost as soft a touch as my mother was. He’ll be giving gowns away if we don’t get him a keeper.”
Harmony jumped up and started pacing about, “I had counted on having Edara about to wear his designs. The cachet of patronizing the same modiste as Noca’s beloved Duchess would have ensured success. As it is—between that and this war—we’ll have to work a bit harder at it. Still,” she pondered, “This might work to our advantage. Edara’s held in high esteem—if I can get her to come to Noca at some point and put about that her sole purpose was to visit that genius designer, Quilliarmus...yes...I think that would work very well. We might even see the ladies of Talex making pilgrimages...”
Jenkins smiled to himself as he watched his Lady plot. Her interest in commerce had been a bit off-putting initially; it had seemed so...common. She had quickly sussed out his attitude, though, and laughingly told him, “You show me how this is any different than a rural lord exhorting his steward to increase the crop yield or get a better price for his wool. I never met a noble that didn’t worry about his pocket book, ‘cept those that preferred having a mortgaged old pile and no servants to keep it over dirtying their hands with filthy lucre. Besides, my active interest lets me pay you far more than the going rate for secretaries, so don’t get all superior about it.”
He really could not fault her logic—nor could he deny that she was a generous mistress. Even her stiff-necked steward, Mason, had come around to her way of thinking. He confided to Jenkins over a small tipple in the Steward’s Office that it was a treat to have a Lady that valued his work and kept his ledgers in the black.
“If that is all, milady, I’ll get on with your replies,” Jenkins began to rise.
Harmony reddened slightly, “Ah...just one more letter, Jenkins...a personal one.”
He did not reveal the amusement he felt. Why the ever-so-confident lady would blush over a personal note was a mystery. He had heard her exchange the bawdiest of tales with her friend, Quill, and the whole household had heard her entertaining her...other friend.
“To Sir Arlian, milady?”
Harmony nodded and turned away from him, “Take this down...”
Lady Harmony Kindon (Dame of Nocaneb)
