Chapter Text
The next round began with Veszra asking Ilmra a question.
“Who cursed your sister?”
“…the abjuration instructor! She was one of my mother’s rivals at school.”
Xotchtil had figured this round would be harder in the sense of deeper questions. They had not accounted for the alcohol.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“It was embarrassing that she fell to it. It wasn’t even a good curse.”
Ilmra was being truthful about the instructor, and about her reasons. Vanity all the way down. They ruled true. Veszra looked disappointed at how straightforward it had been.
Ilmra turned to Zilvrae.
“Why didn’t Selca have Tazennin killed?”
“No one’s really sure. It might have drawn too much attention to the trade situation, but there are also theories that he’s her favorite child.” Zilvrae believed both to be speculation rather than established fact. True.
“Can’t be that favored if she’s giving him to House Malthra,” retorted Veszra.
Zilvrae turned to Veszra,“Ok well if you know so much then how did the market fire start?”
Veszra put her glass down.
“Vow, please.”
Ilmra and Zilvrae considered the options. Veszra would have to wear servant’s clothing to the party. Not a dangerous vow, but sufficiently humiliating to be acceptable. They also discussed, briefly, having her surrender the brooch at her collar, which held some ritual significance in their sisterhood that was entirely lost on Xotchtil. Eventually the vow was agreed. Veszra accepted it without argument.
A little later, Matron Malthra appeared in the doorway. Her puzzled expression quickly smoothed into a practiced smile. “Sorry, ladies, good morning!”
“Maluarra! We’re playing questions and commands! Would you like to join?”
“I’m actually in the middle of something.” She paused for a second to note their disappointed expressions. “But I’ll give you one question as an apology for interrupting!”
The three women exchanged glances and agreed on the question without much discussion.
“What’re you actually going to do with him?” Zilvrae asked.
“Have you seen him? I’m going to get laid.”
Malthra declined a glass, and excused herself down the stairs toward the courtyard. The sylph saw her come out on the ground floor just as Tazennin entered from the opposite side. He moved to discretely flee back the way he came but she yelled a greeting. Malthra stopped next to him near the other door, where he was pretending to inspect the replanted fungi.
The sylph wondered if Xotchtil found this interesting, which they did. She reminded them that she could hear that far, but they’d have to do the translating again. They did their best to keep track of both conversations.
The sylph started understanding Malthra about halfway through: “–know my dad was a wizard? I don’t mean–look. I spent half my childhood on his lap learning alchemy, runes, words of power.”
Ilmra started her turn,“Did Magistrate Velkin steal the treasury earnings ten years ago?”
Malthra again. “Honestly, I didn’t even want to go to temple school. I wanted to stay home and study magic with dad. I just didn’t realize Mom would–”
(Probably) Ilmra,“Obviously, everyone knows that.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“–anyway, I’ve got a legacy to get moving on. I need kids that aren’t stupid, and…”
Down in the courtyard, the wizard’s heart rate ticked upward. This amused the sylph for some reason.
“No.”
True.
Xotchtil delivered the ruling on reflex, and it was only afterward, as they withdrew from Veszra’s mind, that they felt a brief bright flash of accomplishment before her thoughts slammed shut behind them.
Wait. Had they missed something?
Veszra didn’t correct them, obviously. Neither did Ilmra. Zilvrae appeared to have noticed the distraction, but had no actual grounds to object. Below, Malthra had looped her arm through the wizard’s and steered him toward the far colonnade, and the fragments faded out of range. Xotchtil was fairly sure they had just ruled on pieces of two different conversations. It also didn’t help that the turn order seemed to have dissolved at some point. They considered whether or not raising that question was required as a referee, and decided it was a lot more trouble than it was worth.
The game continued.
Zilvrae asked Ilmra about Malthra’s school years.
“I hear the generational turnover of House Malthra is a big change, philosophically. You shared classes with her. What was she like?”
“She wasn’t very interesting. Kept her head down, studied hard, never joined anything.”
“But her mother died within a few months of her coming home. Do you think she did it?”
“Officially speaking, her handmaiden did it.”
“Oh, yes. The one who helped with all those parties. What was the evidence?”
“She was the last one to handle the wine the old matron drank that night. And Maluarra tortured her to death for it, as a good daughter would. It just goes to show, you can’t find good help anymore.”
Ilmra’s information was consistent with what she knew about the situation. She had no concrete reason to doubt it, and neither did anyone who had actually been in the manor that night. True.
Veszra asked her question of Zilvrae.
“Do you know which house funded the attack by–well. They’re unspeakables now, but the ones from last week. There’s no way they could afford that many mercenaries on their own.”
Zilvrae paused, visibly not believing how wide an opening Veszra had left her.
“I know enough to be careful.”
Veszra cringed at the answer but didn’t waste her second one. “Which house do you most suspect?”
Zilvrae, who did not have the skill to answer that one safely, said nothing at all.
The other two debated consequences for a minute or so. Ilmra proposed that Zilvrae pass on a brooch she’d been the holder of for the last decade or so. Veszra proposed that she take a specific, particularly unfortunate-looking male to bed at the end of the party.
Zilvrae looked at both of them.
“You’re both horrible.” She agreed to the ugly man.
The women finished that round, with the usual disputes over what technically constituted a lie. They returned briefly to the market fire, but Veszra volunteered nothing further.
At one point, Ilmra was asking Veszra about the other Blundyth sister. “What do you know about his sister?”
“Noime? Bit of an idiot.”
“No, the younger one! You went to class with her, right?”
“Oh, Castre? No one knows anything about her. I remember seeing her at some of the parties, usually with the band or something. She played the vazhan-do I think. She was super weird though. She never said it did anything important in class.”
“Do you know anything else about her?”
“Nope.”
All true.
Eventually it was agreed, with the profound diplomacy of the very drunk, that enough questions had been asked for one sitting. The outstanding vows would be fulfilled by their deadlines: Veszra would serve drinks at the evening party in servant’s clothing, and Zilvrae would deal with her own obligation afterward. Nobody looked at anyone when they said it.
Xotchtil had a few seconds to be relieved by the end of their obligation before it turned out there was another stage they hadn’t been told about. It was a count of all total lies by each player, to receive one final command / vow. It was always the same, and it always went to whoever had lied the most. It was an enchanted ring, worn for a full day, that forced the wearer to tell the truth. It was fitting, they supposed.
The count did not go smoothly. Veszra remembered three lies, two of which had not happened. Zilvrae insisted her non-answer wasn’t technically a lie, because she had answered, and produced the answer as evidence. Ilmra said very little, which from her was ominous. It didn’t take long for them to all stand up and start yelling.
The immediate shock of it all faded into anger. Xotchtil had done what they were asked in multiple ways, and everything was still turning into a ridiculous clusterfuck. At some point all three of them turned on their referee.
“How sure are you,” Ilmra asked, with the too-careful consonants of a drunk demanding to be taken seriously, “that you’re ruling true and false on the right things?”
Once again, Xotchtil had underestimated how bad things could get. They assessed the room. Three drow priestesses, drinking since midmorning, one of them standing up. The light caught the eye of one of the whip’s little snake-heads. This seemed like a good time to run.
The door opened before they got there, hard enough to hit the wall, the fixtures flaring the way they had flared on the terrace. The sylph stood in the doorway with her hair lifting off her shoulders.
Everyone froze.
The priestesses looked at the sylph. The sylph looked at the priestesses. Then Ilmra made a noise like a small choking sound, and all three of the priestesses broke into laughter at once and fell onto one of the low couches in a heap, tangled together, wheezing. Veszra wiped her eyes.
“I LOVE you BITCHES!” Ilmra shouted, directly into Zilvrae’s shoulder.
Xotchtil chose to interpret that as the conclusion of their responsibility. The sylph followed them down the hall.
“Why do I keep having to drag you out of places?”
I’m doing my best!