SMASH or PASS

Chapter 57: Chapter Fifty-Seven: Mirette

We walked, and he talked. The way merchants talk, filling silence with useful information.

"Twenty years trading with the Sylvanneth. Alchemical supplies in, enchanted wood and rare herbs out. The elves are selective. Building trust takes years."

"How did you earn it?"

"I was married to one of them. For a while." His voice changed. Went softer. "She passed. We had a daughter."

He looked at the trees. The forest light made his face look older.

"My daughter lives with me in Brannock. She’s half-elf. The ears are visible. In the Patchwork, half-breeds draw attention."

"What kind of attention?"

"The Covenant of Purity kind. Half-breeds are technically legal with full human custody. But ’technically legal’ and ’actually safe’ live in different neighborhoods." He looked at me. "I keep Mirette at the warehouse because the outside has opinions about what she is. Most of those opinions would hurt her."

He stopped walking. Faced me.

"I have a proposal. You’re professional on contracts. Same age as her. I’d like you to visit. Talk to her. Let her experience conversation with a man her age who isn’t me or a servant."

"Just conversation?"

"Just conversation." His eyes said more than his mouth.

Tsk. Old fox.

People really don’t just help you without hidden motives in this world, do they?

We rode the rest of the way in comfortable silence. The caravan moved slowly through the forest, the trees thinning as we approached the border.

Aldren pointed out landmarks, a collapsed watchtower from the pre-Convergence era, a clearing where the elves held seasonal trade markets, a river crossing that flooded every spring and destroyed the bridge every other year.

"I rebuilt that bridge four times," he said. "The fifth time I built it three feet higher. It hasn’t flooded since."

"Why didn’t you build it higher the first time?"

"Because the first time I didn’t know the river. By the fifth time, I understood its patterns." He looked at me. "Most problems are rivers. You build bridges across them. Sometimes the bridge holds. Sometimes the river teaches you something." He adjusted the caravan’s reins. The horses, accustomed to the forest path, needed little guidance.

"How did you end up in trade?" I asked.

"Accident. I was a guild contractor originally. Bronze Ledger, like you. Took a delivery quest to the Sylvanneth. Met an elf woman on the border. She was selling herbs that nobody in Brannock knew the value of. I bought everything she had for 3 gold. Sold it in Brannock for 40." He smiled. "That margin got my attention. I went back. Bought more. Sold more. Eventually the buying and selling became more profitable than the guild quests, so I quit the guild and became a merchant."

"And the elf woman?"

"She was my supplier for two years. Then my partner for three. Then Mirette’s mother for the rest." His voice went quiet again. "She died when Mirette was six. A fever that the elven healers couldn’t treat because she gave birth to a half-human child and their politics was... complicated."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t be. She lived. She loved. She made a daughter who can’t pour tea but can analyze the emotional dynamics of a teapot."

Huh... That was a description.

He looked at the forest canopy. "She would have loved watching Mirette grow up. That’s the part that hurts. The missing." He paused. "Mirette is a river I haven’t figured out yet."

"What do you mean?"

"She’s my daughter. I love her. I also don’t understand her. She grew up in a warehouse surrounded by servants who do everything for her. She’s never had a friend her age. She’s never poured her own tea. She’s never made a decision that wasn’t pre-approved by Henna, her nanny." He rubbed his face. "She’s nineteen years old and she’s never lived. I don’t know how to fix that without breaking the cage, and I don’t know how to break the cage without exposing her to things that could hurt her."

"So you’re bringing in a visitor."

"I’m bringing in someone who might show her that the world outside the warehouse isn’t as dangerous as I’ve made her believe." He smiled. His smirk was tired and honest. "Or someone who confirms that it is. Either way, she needs to find out."

What is this old fox really planning...?

Whatever, this may be a little bit of a mood change.

◇◇◇

Aldren’s trade warehouse was in the upper merchant quarter, near the bridge that connected the commercial district to the academy hill.

A three-story building with a loading dock on the ground floor and living quarters above.

It was clean and organized. Crates stacked by destination. Ashenmere, Vehlmere, Sylvanneth, traveling east.

"She’s upstairs," Aldren said. "The drawing room. I told her we’d have a visitor today but I didn’t specify when." He stopped at the staircase. "She’s going to be... herself. A little warning. Her version of ’herself’ can be overwhelming for people who aren’t used to it."

"Overwhelming how?" Also did he just admit planning this encounter?

"She talks about her cat. A lot. And her hair. A lot. And she asks questions that have no wrong answer but she’ll react as if every answer is catastrophically revealing." He smiled. The smile was tired and fond at the same time. "She’s my daughter. I love her more than the trade routes and the warehouse and everything in it combined. She’s also the most impractical person I’ve ever met, and I’ve met elven royalty."

We climbed the stairs. The second floor was the living quarters. Warm. Well-furnished. The walls had paintings of the Sylvanneth forest, probably commissioned from an elven artist based on the detail in the leaf work.

There was also a cat, gray and fluffy, it sat on a windowsill watching us with the particular disdain that cats reserve for people who are not directly providing food.

"That’s Nimbus," Aldren said.

Nimbus did not acknowledge the introduction.

The drawing room was at the end of the hall.

She was there.

Mirette.

Pale skin. Dark hair pulled into twintails that framed her face. White eyes that caught light in a way that was almost luminous, the iris so pale it looked silver at certain angles. Pointed ears, unmistakably elven, unhidden because she was in her own home. She was sitting in a cushioned chair with her legs tucked under her, holding a book that she was reading.

She looked up. Her white eyes found me.

"Papa. You didn’t say he was coming TODAY."

"Surprise."

"Papa!" She stood. The book fell. A servant caught it. "I’m not READY. My hair isn’t—" She touched her twintails. They were flawless. "And the room isn’t..." The room was immaculate.

She was panicking about nothing real. About the concept of being unprepared, which for someone who looked almost perfect was meaningless.

"Mirette, this is Noel. Noel, my daughter."

"...Hi."

"Hi."

Silence. Aldren looked between us. "I’ll leave you two. Tea in twenty minutes." He left. One servant remained in the corner.

She sat. Gestured at a chair. "Sit. Please."

I sat. She fidgeted with her twintails. Adjusted her dress. The servant brought tea without being asked.

"So. You’re a guild member."

"Yeah." How much did that old man tell her?

"What’s that like?"

"I take quests. Kill rats. Deliver packages."

"You KILL RATS?"

"It’s a quest. The guild pays me."

"On PURPOSE?" She looked at the servant. The servant’s face was carefully neutral. "Papa never mentioned the rat killing."

"It’s not a major part of my life."

"It SOUNDS like a major part." She picked up her teacup. Her hands were soft. No calluses. "I’ve never killed anything. The servants handle insects. And cooking. And—" She gestured at everything. "Everything."

"You’ve never cooked?"

"Why would I cook? Henna cooks."

"Who’s Henna?"

"My personal maid. She’s been with me since I was four. She does my hair, my clothes, my meals, my room, my schedule. She reads to me before bed." She stopped. "Is that weird? That sounds weird when I say it to someone who kills rats for money."

"...It’s a different lifestyle."

"It’s the only lifestyle I know. Papa says I’m spoiled. I told him I’m not spoiled, I’m accustomed. He said that’s the same thing in a nicer dress."

The system fired on Mirette. Rare. Arcane class. Half-elf heritage. 75 SP.

PASS.

She’s Aldren’s daughter. Aldren had just saved me from five elven teenagers. Also probably did a whole investigation on my background and plan this whole encounter based on it.

We talked for forty minutes. About the cat (Nimbus, gray, fluffy, knocks things off tables). About Henna, who ran the household with bureaucratic precision. About the servants and the schedule and the complete absence of any experience that required her to do anything for herself.

"Henna schedules my meals, my baths, my study sessions, my recreation time, and my sleep. She posts the schedule on my wall every morning."

"Do you like following schedules?"

"I don’t know. I’ve never not followed one." She tilted her head. "...Is that weird?"

"It’s..."

It brings flashbacks about a certain cowkin.

"It is weird. You don’t have to be polite." She sipped tea. "I’ve been scheduled my entire life. Nobody trusts me to make decisions. Which is fair. I can’t pour my own tea."

"You could learn."

"WHY would I learn? Henna pours tea. Everyone pours tea except me. If I started pouring, Henna would think she was being fired."

"What’s your favorite color?" she asked.

"I don’t have one."

"Oh." She blinked. "That was my only prepared question."

Silence.

"I have a backup. What’s your favorite food?"

"Bread."

"Just... bread? Not brioche or the seed loaf from the Crown Ward?"

"Regular bread. 60 copper."

"SIXTY COPPER." She put her teacup down too hard. It rattled. The servant steadied it. "My breakfast rolls cost 3 silver. They’re imported. They have golden raisins."

"That’s fifty times what I pay."

"Is it? I’ve never done the math. Math was what servants and accountants did. They handle the numbers. I handle my schedule. And my hair."

"Your hair looks fine."

"FINE? Fine is what you say about weather." She looked offended. Actually offended, the way only someone whose hair was their primary creative outlet could be offended by the word "fine."

"Your hair looks excellent."

"Thank you. It takes forty-five minutes."

She touched both twintails simultaneously. "It takes forty-five minutes. Henna does the right side. I do the left. The left is always worse." She turned her head. "Can you tell which side is mine?"

They were identical. But I took an educated guess. "The left."

"You CAN tell?!" She was mortified. "Henna SAID nobody could tell. She LIED."

She spent five minutes examining both twintails in a hand mirror. The hair conversation lasted longer than any other topic.

She was exhausting. She was ridiculous. She had never cooked a meal, poured a drink, chosen an outfit, or made a decision that Henna hadn’t pre-approved. She lived in a cage made of servants and schedules and golden raisins, and she didn’t even know it was a cage because she’d never seen the outside.

But she was also the first person in weeks who’d reacted to me with genuine surprise rather than calculated interest. Every woman at the academy had an agenda. Helena had an agenda. The ethics committee had agendas. Even Pixia had an agenda, however hidden.

Mirette had no agenda. She had a single prepared question about favorite colors and a backup about food. She was the most socially unequipped person I’d ever met, and there was something refreshing about someone whose biggest problem was imperfect hair.

◇◇◇

Aldren found us twenty minutes later. Mirette was explaining Nimbus’s table-clearing habits in exhaustive detail while I drank tea and listened.

"He knocked Papa’s shipping manifest off the desk last week. Eight pages. Henna had to reorganize them by trade route. She said Nimbus was making a philosophical statement about the futility of human organization." She looked at Aldren. "Was that a joke? I can never tell when Henna is joking."

"Henna is always joking," Aldren said. "She just says it with a straight face."

"That explains SO MUCH."

◇◇◇

Aldren walked me to the door. At the entrance, out of Mirette’s hearing, he said: "She talked more in twenty minutes with you than she talks to me in a week."

"She talked about her cat."

"She talked. That’s what matters." He shook my hand. Firm grip. The grip of a man who’d just watched something he’d been hoping for actually happen. "Come back. Thursday. She’ll be ready. She’ll probably prepare fifty questions this time."

"I’ll be here." Again, what the fuck does he really want from me?

"Good." He let go of my hand. "And Noel? The academy reputation. The one they call you."

"Yeah?"

"Mirette doesn’t know about it. I’d prefer it stayed that way."

"Understood."

He nodded and closed the door.

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