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Iobel is barely related to the Countess. The Countess is her great-aunt, and there are several layers of not-very-close family in there: the Countess never much liked her sister, said sister engendered little fondness in her only daughter, and said daughter - well, Iobel liked her just fine, which only served to cement the distance between her and the Countess. Iobel supposes she is technically in line for the title, but only if a rather intimidating number of cousins from that more prolific branch of the family all succumb to mortality first.
So Iobel lives in a little flat above a little store and under the old landlord and his wife, and she cohabits with her cat, and she sells hexes and custom spellcharts and consults on other people's spells in progress. It's a decent living even though she buys nice, quality things to lay the hexes on, and it's fun, and she has lots of spare time for personal research and reading since she taught the cat to operate the cash drawer and speak the few Marlese words necessary to tell customers "thank you" and "my spellbinder will be back in an hour" and convinced him to actually use those words instead of his choicer acquisitions.
But she is still noticeably related to the Countess, and when the Countess holds a big shindig, when she wants to fill up that manor house and all the gardens with eight hundred people, then Iobel gets an invitation.
So she goes, because why not, it's a holiday party and the shop's getting no business on the Equinox Revel anyway. She brings Cricket the cat along and takes the ferry up the canal to the estate and is offered a little guest room in the back wing and subtly insulted into borrowing one of her great-aunt's old dresses for the duration of the party. And then she loiters, cat at her heels making rude private-language comments about everyone they see, and she eats the hors d'oeuvres and lets some cousin teach her a simple dance because she finally managed a spell to cure her clumsiness the other month and this is as good an opportunity as any.
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come_midnight
come_midnight
"Alas. Hereditary monarchy. You think Edarial will do okay if he gets ahold of the big chair?"
"I think so, but he could always use suggestions for what things need doing."
come_midnight
"Are you some sort of advisor, is that why you know them well enough to speculate?"
"Sort of. Not officially, but I like to keep my eyes and ears open for things that involve the future of this country, and ways to help it along."
He snorts. "Definitely not. I just try to pay attention."
By employing spies. He's not, technically, one himself.
By employing spies. He's not, technically, one himself.
come_midnight
"What brings you to this party, anyway, are you a friend of my great-aunt or what?"
"Count of the Northern Isles. Also an acquaintance of your great-aunt, though I wouldn't call us friends."
"Why," teases the man, "were you worried that I was beneath your station?"
come_midnight
"No, I just wanted to know what brought you into the princes' orbit, since you are apparently not a spy."
"Counthood has its benefits. I'm trying to see if they will be a good fit for Marlatia, or cause the country to - worsen."
come_midnight
"If they do worse than the late queen I might pack up and move to Lathalind."
"Indeed. That's what I'd very much like to prevent."
"Well, not you in particular, but them doing worse than the late queen, certainly."
"Thank you. If you'd like to help, I'm trying to find possible queen candidates."
"To be entirely fair," says Natariem wryly, "I am not necessarily saying you. Unless you'd think you'd make a good queen?"
come_midnight
"Nobody else is springing to mind. I like to think I'd make a good queen, all else being equal, but it isn't, is it, there's a wedding involved."
"Yes, annoyingly messy business, that. What would you do with it, if someone just handed you queenhood?"
come_midnight
"I'd need more details than I have from my vantage point as the proprietor of a magic shop -"
Cricket says something.
"- who is usually not personally staffing the till, yes, thank you, Cricket - about what needs doing, first. But the canals are disgustingly full of trash and there are plenty of unemployed people capable of manual labor; those seem like problems that could benefit from encountering each other. The state of general education is a disaster; if my mother weren't a schoolteacher I would have had a hard time even getting into a proper library to self-teach once I got past the age where her job qualified me for a slot at the school itself. I did okay, but plenty of people don't. The legal status of familiars is too vague, it's based entirely around trusting spellbinders not to want to do anything bad to their familiars once we've bound them, but even if that works ninety percent of the time there's always the possibility of the relationship deteriorating or never having been very good to begin with; there's plenty of ways to mistreat a dependent animal that don't risk killing it and unmaking the spellbinder. And as near as I can tell, tropical fruit is expensive because the queen once upon a time took a dislike to the ambassador from Ethayr, not for any sound economical reason, so I'd want to look into the underlying tariffs. I'd go ahead and make heir adoption legal, too, as previously mentioned. That sort of thing."
Cricket says something.
"- who is usually not personally staffing the till, yes, thank you, Cricket - about what needs doing, first. But the canals are disgustingly full of trash and there are plenty of unemployed people capable of manual labor; those seem like problems that could benefit from encountering each other. The state of general education is a disaster; if my mother weren't a schoolteacher I would have had a hard time even getting into a proper library to self-teach once I got past the age where her job qualified me for a slot at the school itself. I did okay, but plenty of people don't. The legal status of familiars is too vague, it's based entirely around trusting spellbinders not to want to do anything bad to their familiars once we've bound them, but even if that works ninety percent of the time there's always the possibility of the relationship deteriorating or never having been very good to begin with; there's plenty of ways to mistreat a dependent animal that don't risk killing it and unmaking the spellbinder. And as near as I can tell, tropical fruit is expensive because the queen once upon a time took a dislike to the ambassador from Ethayr, not for any sound economical reason, so I'd want to look into the underlying tariffs. I'd go ahead and make heir adoption legal, too, as previously mentioned. That sort of thing."
He tilts his head.
"Hm. Okay, you would probably make a good queen. I recommend making a trip to the palace and seeing if you can meet them, and if they suit you..." He shrugs. "We get a decent queen."
"Hm. Okay, you would probably make a good queen. I recommend making a trip to the palace and seeing if you can meet them, and if they suit you..." He shrugs. "We get a decent queen."