Cherished Nugget, Shursta began his missive, It is for charity’s sake that I sit and scribble this to you on this morning of all mornings, in the sure knowledge that if I do not, your churlishness will have you feeding burnt porridge to all the grayheads under your care. To protect them, I will relate to you the tale of my meshing. Brace yourself.
The bride wore red, as brides do—but you have never seen such a red as the cloth they make in Droon. Had she worn it near shore, sharks would have beached themselves, mistaking her for food. It was soft, too, to the touch. What was it like? Plumage. No, pelt. Like Damis Ungerline’s seal pelt, except not as ratty and well-chewed. How is the old lady anyway? Has she lost her last tooth yet? Give her my regards.
The bride’s brothers, six giants whose prowess in athletics, economics, politics, and music makes them the boast of the Blodestones, converged on me the night I arrived in Droon and insisted I burn the clothes I came in and wear something worthy of my forthcoming station.
“Except,” said one—forgive me; I have not bothered to learn all their names—“we have nothing ready made in his size.”
“Perhaps a sailcloth?”
“Damis Valdessparrim has some very fine curtains.”
And more to this effect. A droll scene. Hold it fast in your mind’s eye. Me, nodding and agreeing to all their pronouncements with a fine ingratiation of manner. Couldn’t speak a word, of course. Sweating, red as a boiled lobster—you know how I get—I suppose I seemed choice prey while they poked and prodded, loomed and laughed. I felt about three feet tall and four years old again.
Alas, low as they made me, I could not bring myself to let them cut the clothes from my back. I batted at their hands. However, they were quicker than I, as is most everybody. They outnumbered me, and their knives came out. My knife—newly gifted and handsomer than anything I’ve ever owned—was taken from me. My fate was sealed.
Then their sister came to my rescue. Think not she had been standing idly by, enjoying the welcome her brothers made me. No, as soon as we’d stepped foot under the Blodestone roof, she had been enveloped in a malapertness of matrons, and had only just emerged from their fond embraces.
She has a way of silencing even the most garrulous of men, which the Blodestone boys, I assure you, are.
When they were all thoroughly cowed and scuffling their feet, she took me by the hand and led me to the room I am currently occupying. My mesh-rite suit was laid out for me, fine ivory linens embroidered by, she informed me, her mother’s own hand. They fit like I had been born to them. The Astrion Council, they say, has eyes everywhere. And measuring tapes, too, apparently.
Yes, yes, I stray from my subject, O antsiest (and onliest) sister. The meshing.
Imagine a balmy afternoon. Warm, with a wind. (You probably had the same kind of afternoon in Sif, so it shouldn’t be too hard.) Meat had been roasting since the night before in vast pits. The air smelled of burnt animal flesh, by turns appetizing and nauseating.
We two stood inside the crone circle. The Blodestones stood in a wider circle around the crones. After that, a circle of secondary kin. After that, the rest of the guests.
We spoke our vows. Or rather, the bride did. Your brother, dear Nugget, I am sorry to say, was his usual laconic self and could not find his way around his own tongue. Shocking! Nevertheless, the bride crowned him in lilies, and cuffed to his ear a gemmaja of green chalcedony, set in a tangle of silver. This, to declare him a Blodestone by mesh-rite.
You see, I enclose a gemmaja of your own. You are no longer Sharrar Sarth, but Damisel Sharrar Blodestone, mesh-sister to the Gleaming One. When you come of croning, you, too, shall take your seat on the Astrion Council. Power, wealth, glory. Command of the kinlines. Fixer of fates.
There. Never say I never did anything for you.
Do me one favor, Sharrar. Do not wear your gemmaja upon your forehead, or in any place too obvious. Do not wear it where any stranger who might covet it might think to take it from you by force. Please.
A note of observation. For all they dress so fine and speak with fancy voices, I cannot say that people in Droon are much different than people in Sif. Sit back in your chair and imagine me rapturous in the arms of instant friends.
I write too hastily. Sharrar, I’m sorry. The ink comes out as gall. I know for a fact that you are scowling at the page and biting your nails. My fault.
I will slow down, as if I were speaking, and tell you something to set your heart at ease.
Other than the bride—who is what she is—I have perhaps discovered one friend. At least, he is friendlier than anyone else I have met in Droon. I even bothered remembering his name for you.
He is some kind of fifth or sixth cousin to the bride. Not a Blodestone. One of the ubiquitous Spectroxes. (Why are they ubiquitous, you ask? I am not entirely sure. I was told they are ubiquitous, so ubiquitous I paint them for you now. Miners and craftsmen, mostly, having holdings in the mountains. Poor but on the whole respectable.) This particular Spectrox is called Laric Spectrox. Let me tell you how I met him.
I was lingering near the banquet table after the brunt of the ceremony had passed from my shoulders.
Imagine me a mite famished. I had not eaten yet that day, my meshing day, and it was nearing sunset. I was afraid to serve myself even a morsel for the comments my new mesh-brothers might make. They had already made several to the end that, should I ever find myself adrift at sea, I might sustain myself solely on myself until rescue came, and still be man enough for three husbands to their sister!
I thought it safe, perhaps, to partake of some fruit. All eyes were on a sacred dance the bride was performing. This involved several lit torches swinging from the ends of chains and what I can only describe as alarming acrobatics. I had managed to eat half a strawberry when a shadow dwarfed the dying sun. A creature precisely three times the height of any of the bride’s brothers—though much skinnier, and black as the sharp shell of my new blade—laughed down at me.
“Bored with the fire spinning already? Hyrryai’s won contests, you know. Although she can’t—ah—couldn’t hold a candle to little Kuista.”
I squinted up at this living beanstalk of a man, wondering if he ever toppled in a frisky wind. To my surprise, when I opened my mouth to speak, the sentence came out easily. In the order I had planned it, no less.
(I still find it strange how my throat knows when to trust someone, long before I’ve made up my own mind about it. It was you who first observed that, I remember. Little Sharrar, do the grayheads tell you that your name means ‘Wisdom’? If they don’t, they should.)