Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

He should probably change his last name soon, Tristan decided as he got ready for the meeting with his newest visitor. The king had pretty much told him to, and he mostly understood why, but ‘Venora’ sounded so much better than ‘Oakleigh’ in his opinion. Well, at least he had gotten a duchy, a nice new house and a couple of servants in exchange for taking on a name that he wasn’t particularly fond of, he thought and left his room to look for the sitting room. He had only moved in very recently, and the house was bigger than his old one, so he got lost of course, went through the wrong door and suddenly found himself in the kitchen where he had to ask the cook who looked pretty shocked and bowed hurriedly for directions.

The man that he would be meeting that trial was a certain Damon Andaris, a wine merchant that had come to do business with Oakleigh which was something that he was actually pretty excited about since it would probably mean an opportunity to honor Ilaren. He remembered meeting Damon on a couple of occasions when he had been younger (although he was still pretty young now). He reminded him of his favourite cousin, Andráska, minus the knight part. At least he didn’t think that Damon Andaris was a knight – unless he had learned to use a weapon in the meantime and become a master warrior?

Ah, there it was. He reached the door to the sitting room at the same time as one of the servants who carried a bottle of fine wine in his hands. Both duke and servant looked at each other for a moment, and then Tristan extended his hand. “Give the bottle to me, please. I’ll take care of Lord Andaris myself”, he informed him and briefly wondered if that was appropriate for a man in his position before he decided that he didn’t care. He was a duke now, and he had promised Cassander that he would do his job well and make him proud, but that didn’t mean that he would change his entire personality and become another one of those boring, stuck-up nobles and follow all of their pointless little social rules.

“Lord Andaris”, he greeted Damon as he entered the room because there was a difference between not caring about etiquette and being downright impolite to your guest – the latter was never a good idea, especially not if you were in a position of power and had gotten there in a somewhat unusual manner. “Let me welcome you to Oakleigh! How are you? Did you have a good trip?” he asked, plopped down on the sofa next to Damon and poured each of them a glass of wine before he leaned back, draping an arm across the backrest as he did so.

The Andaris would have the opportunity to take a closer look at Rynmere’s newest duke then. Tristan was younger than him by an arc or two, with dark hair, pale skin and brilliant blue eyes, and he was dressed in a tasteful dark suit and a shirt that was the exact color of his eyes.

He had, briefly, considered putting on suit that was made entirely out of feathers because feathers were in fashion at the moment, and he strived to be fashionable, but then he had come to the conclusion that it might scare his guest, and he didn’t want Damon to run away screaming when he needed to do business with him.

“I thought we’d have a bit of fun before we start to talk about the reason for your visit”, he remarked, grinned and raised his glass. “The wine’s from Oakleigh. I used to only drink Venoran wine, but a duke should favour the products of his duchy, shouldn’t he?”

“If you want to, I can have a servant bring us some snacks as well. Tell me what you think of the wine though. You are the expert here. I just get drunk occasionally.”

“At the moment I’m still Tristan Venora, I think, but I will eventually be Lord Oakleigh”, Tristan replied as Damon asked him if it was Lord Venora or Lord Oakleigh now and furrowed his brow a little before he offered, “If all that naming business is too confusing for you, you can just call me Tristan. We are of a similar age, and we are alone, so I don’t see why we have to keep up all the formalities. Unless the servants are listening at the door?” He turned his head towards the door and pretended to check, and then he laughed. “No, I don’t think they are”, he concluded. “Besides, the door is so thick that they would probably only understand a small part of what we are saying anyway.”

“As for how I’m finding my new lands”, he continued. “I like Oakleigh. I’m not sure if the feeling is mutual though”, he admitted and shrugged his shoulders. He was quite aware that Cassander’s decision to bring the Eastern Settlement closer to Rynmere and turning it into a couple of duchies was a controversial one, to put it mildly. Truth to be told, he was surprised that the merchant families and whatever other people lived here hadn’t started a rebellion yet, but he didn’t want to worry about it at the moment.

“I already am in good health”, he remarked as he raised his glass. “So I’ll just toast to Ilaren instead!” Having said that, he took a large gulp before he put the glass down again and looked at Damon thoughtfully. He’d noticed the mark.

“You know”, he said. The tone of his voice was strangely wistful for a moment before he smiled all over his face. “I met her once. Ilaren. She blessed you, didn’t she? I was in the Blacksmith Arms that night. She joined me, and we drank together, and then she went for a walk with me. She accompanied me home and stayed with me. I’ve never met a more beautiful woman in my entire life.”

To a halfway intelligent man it would be obvious what he’d meant, although he had avoided the words “slept with me” on purpose. He wasn’t bashful – on the contrary! – but he cared about Ilaren and saw her as more than just his newest conquest. She was simply awesome, and he didn’t want her to think that he was bragging about what he had done with her, on the off chance that she was somehow watching him and listening to what he said. He wanted to see her again!

“How did you meet her?” he wanted to know.

“Anyway, I dare to disagree”, he continued once he had given Damon enough time to reply and took a sip from his glass. “It’s more fun to get drunk when the wine’s good. I just don’t like cheap alcohol!” He shuddered in a somewhat exaggerated manner.

Damon had an unusual way of drinking wine, and an even more unusual way of describing it, Tristan decided. He’d just wanted to know what he thought, and Damon had started to talk about legs and meats and all that other stuff that didn’t make much sense and that nearly made Tristan roll his eyes because it seemed completely superfluous to him.

“Have you ever thought that wine language is weird?” he wanted to know and raised the bottle to refill Damon’s glass. “Why talk about legs and meats when wine can’t walk and doesn’t contain any meat?” The thought that somebody was probably dumping stuff that didn’t belong there – including animal body parts - into their wine somewhere occurred to him, but surely the Raglans wouldn’t do that, would they?

“It was“, Tristan agreed with a smile on his face as Damon remarked that it sounded like an amazing night. He would definitely remember it for the rest of his life. He had noticed the other man’s reaction to his revelation of course – only a blind man wouldn’t have done so - but he decided not to comment on it. Instead he said, “I’m glad that she liked you and blessed you, and I hope that you’ll get to know her a whole lot better in the future. There was a time when I wanted to have her blessing as well – when I would have done anything to get it – but being her servant would be kind of weird now, you know? I can’t stop seeing her as the woman I met in the Blacksmith Arms.”

He pretty much ignored Damon’s challenge. He wasn’t jealous at all that Ilaren apparently also liked him, whatever that meant. People were allowed to like more than one person and even have more than one lover in his opinion. He had never been particularly jealous of anybody – he just didn’t see the point in such a feeling and wasn’t very good at it either – apart from Padraig because Padraig was so uncreative and boring that the very sight of him made him want to fall asleep. The terrible tutor just didn’t deserve a woman like Faith in his opinion. He’d almost dropped a sculpture on his head once.

Another man would probably have pointed out that, while Ilaren hadn’t blessed him, Zanik had definitely done so, but Tristan didn’t because it was kind of obvious since a subtle golden aura often surrounded him these trials (although he did wonder when Damon would finally notice it). Where was Zanik by the way? He hadn’t seen the Immortal of Seduction, Strength and Music since the premiere of his play, a few seasons before. He briefly wondered if he should write him and ask him how he was doing because he was kind of worried about him – did Immortals have an address, like normal people, and how did you find out where they lived? – and then he laughed and shook his head because Zanik was probably just busy and not in trouble and focused his attention on Damon again.

Unlike Damon’s voice Tristan’s voice wasn’t strained at all. He was completely calm and relaxed, and he was even enjoying himself – a lot more than he had expected. “I know that wine isn’t just red or white”, he remarked and drank from his glass again. “And that not every red wine tastes the same. I’ve drunk enough wine in the past couple of arcs! Why legs though?” he asked again because it still didn’t make any sense to him. “And if wine has legs, does it have feet and toes and knees and such as well?”

“Anyway”, he continued. “I would love to learn! What do you want from me in return?” he wanted to know because nothing in life was ever completely free, besides it would probably be a good idea if they started to talk about business soon, before they were too drunk to do so or care much about it. His glass was already almost empty!

Tristan frowned momentarily as Damon talked about their customers preferring Andaris wine. He’d drunk it on occasion and it wasn’t too bad – in fact it was perfectly tolerable - but Venora wine was so much better, and Oakleigh wine was the best of course because he was the Duke of Oakleigh, and being a Duke was just plain awesome!

Then the other man mentioned just how many bottles they wanted to buy though, and the frown disappeared, and Tristan’s eyes lit up as if he had been given a great gift. He did briefly wonder if the Raglans could supply that many bottles, and then he came to the conclusion that they probably could of course because they owned the biggest vineyard in the area.

“That”, he thus replied and drank the rest of his wine before it became lukewarm because lukewarm wine was disgusting in his opinion. “Shouldn’t be a problem. How soon do you need the bottles? As for the price, I’m afraid I can’t tell you how much exactly the wine will cost because I don’t have the price list here, and I unfortunately don’t know it by heart yet either, so how about you tell me how much you would be willing to spend?”

“If it’s not enough, I’ll just pay for the rest myself and send you the bottles for free. I don’t mind spending my own money if it helps promote Oakleigh. I’ll even have the bottles delivered in especially nice boxes.” He grinned as he said that, and then he eyed the bottle in front of him because all that talk about different kinds of wine had made him thirsty again. He wondered how the Raglans got any work done, being the owners of a big vineyard. How did they resist the temptation? Maybe they just hired teetotalers to work for them?

“So”, he remarked, perhaps wrongly assuming that they were done. “What about legs and getting drunk?”