Nobody's Got No Class

[Hadrian]

67th Summer, 512 A.V. night During the Summer, at least, famine was rare in Zeltiva. This party was in the home of a merchant out of Syliras, one of his father's competitors, but they were all very civilized, were merchants of Sylira, and so he was invited. Partygoers were wowed by Benshiran wine, but also proud of their own foods turned into delicacies, bits of fish so fresh it was served raw, wrapped in paper-thin seaweed and sticky rice. Rice, at least, had a tendency to keep over long journeys, and the wine was bottled. Hadrian was suitably impressed by the display of wealth, but he had grown up among it, and he had lived in dirt and wanting as well, so he thought he had a more complete perspective on it. As always, he ate little, drank less. He was still working on his first glass of wine two hours after arriving. The taste was wonderful, but he didn't want to lose his head. He had told the story of his storm-wrought Vantha coloring a total of five times already, and truth be told, he was getting bored. When Winter came, these people would be hoarding food and the Syliran merchant would be charging double or triple what his goods were worth, even schlepped through the Zastoska Mountains. But he represented the University now, and that had its cons as well as its pros. He wished he could slip away now and hie to his ancestor's laboratory, kept safe and secret not so very far away. So much to do, so little time. He swallowed a sigh, walked over to peruse a painting of Laviku beneath the sea, wondering what the sealord thought of human fripperies. Unfortunately, he could still overhear the host speaking to a few others, saying the only reason Zeltiva starved betimes was that its people were too distracted with their highfalutin learning to do honest work. Then Hadrian swallowed a response, and attempted to keep his breathing even. He took another sip of the wine.

[Montaine]

Why was he here? Montaine Redsun poked cautiously with his index finger at a shiny lump he had been assured was food. It was fish, sure enough. He knew fish. He had grown up in the city of fish, and knew fish. He knew what fish looked like, cooked, raw, in between. This was not cooked fish. He had put quite a few things in his mouth over the years, it wasn’t wise to be picky when impoverished and starving and surrounded by famine, but he possessed a weak stomach and at that moment is stomach was giving out a resounding negative to the lump. Why couldn’t they simply sear it and serve it like they did in the market? He looked around. He knew no one here. He had seen most of them around the city at one time or another, served a number of them too, but that was back when he was just some lowly craftsman to whom they didn’t give a second look. Now, thanks to Calbert’s incessant finagling and his own foolish desire to redistribute his newfound wealth to those who actually had a use for it, Montaine Redsun was a name muttered in higher circles. That wasn’t to say high circles; simply that a classier sort of person had started to learn his name. He was ever so slightly fearful, however, that his boss wouldn’t stop until he was gifting glass to Maria herself. The wine was good though. He hadn’t had wine since the day of the storm when, under the misapprehension that it was to be his last day on Mizahar, he had shared a couple of bottles of stolen Bluevein 480 with the fair doctor Erudite in the cellar of his local pub. If he remembered the day correctly he didn’t die, though the next morning wished that he had. But the wine was good, better at least than the swill that usually passed for alcohol in the harbour city. The glassworker patted down his waistcoat. He was tempted to unbutton it but already had his sleeve rolled up and feared the chastisement of his boss for looking a smidgeon too slovenly, too crafting class. He stood to one side, trying not to catch anyone’s eye. He had spent the first half of his presence at this haughty, hoity-toity shindig being praised and summarily patronised for his background. Oh, you grew up in that part of town? How terrible! How simply terrible! I hear they’re all vagabonds and villains down there. Oh! Your accent is so delightfully quaint, so quaint! You’re so delightfully quaint my dear! Say that again! Oh you’re so funny! So quaint! It appeared that at a certain level of wealth some of the subtleties of furious, indignant glaring were lost as they continued on and on and on until finally he could take no more, made an excuse and stepped outside. He had managed to sneak back in a short while later and his efforts to avoid further socialisation with these people, these strange, alien people, had been so far successful. Why was he here?

[Hadrian]

Do they have these things in the Ukalas, Sealord? he silently asked the portrait of his confessor-god, the quiet companion of the deep to whom he had spoken many a secret on the various ships that took him on a piecemeal journey from Avanthal's melted quays to Zeltiva. He made a quiet gesture of respect to the portrait, nothing flashy, the intent not to attract attention, but, well, one never knew what was looking back from the other side of a mirror or painting, reflective surface or otherwise. He could all but see what was going on behind him as if he had eyes on the back of his head, having learned to use his auristic sense as a separate sense rather than piggybacking upon his more mundane five. So it stood to reason the gods could sense even more clearly, more cleverly, than a mere magus of twenty-three years. What was that about eyes on the back of his head? He was also awkward, the fact proven when he turned around to immediately bump into the uncomfortable artisan. "Pardon," he murmured. He tried to remember if he had eaten so as to combat the effects of the wine. Yes? No? Hm. "Pardon," he repeated. "I should watch where I'm going."

[Montaine]

‘Ah shyke, no I weren’t lookin’ where I were goin’,’ the glassworker startled at the contact, his surprise leading to a momentary lapse in his practised attempts to lessen the harshness of his accent, he cleared his throat and tried again, ‘Sorry, er sorry, really, it was my fault.’ Well, so much for the lay low plan. He internally berated himself and checked his drink which fortunately remained unspilled. The potential embarrassment of dousing one of the undoubtedly more esteemed and, frankly, better placed to be there guests in wine would have been monumental. He could feel his lungs rattling in his chest. He had felt anxious the moment he stepped into the room, a sense of overwhelming unbelonging. He took a tick to calm himself and regard the gentleman he had unwittingly knocked into. The man was young, not unattractive, Monty had lived among enough paupers and served enough prim and proper citizens of status to know how each tended to hold themselves in certain company but this fellow eluded his presuppositions about the typical wealthy attendants of the do. He was clearly from a good background but he looked so bored. ‘I’m Montaine, Montaine Redsun,’ he said, offering his hand, ‘Token worker,’ he smiled, but his brows remained furrowed. It was tentative, cautious. The glassworker simply had no knowledge of the arena in which he had unwillingly found himself being pushed into. Were he back at the pub with his colleagues, with his friends, he would have been drunk by now and singing whatever dirty ditty the musician happened to be playing. Here it was all subtle nuance and careful wording and every exchange, no matter how seemingly banal, appeared to have a right and a wrong answer. He had called one woman’s hair nice and received a glare of daggers and commented on the quality of the glasses which seemed to go off well. He had never been prepared for this. He didn’t possess the years of training upper class small talk that everyone else seemed to have. He’d spent his youth listening to his Da or swearing and drinking with his friends, not practising politic or consuming inedible dainties of the tiniest portions. At least the drink was good.

[Hadrian]

"Call it even?" he offered. He was trying to be the urbane Andry Ellis, his alias in Ravok, but it was difficult to be both him and Hadrian Aelius, who wasn't nearly as glib and comfortable with the society of people. "I am Hadrian Aelius," he replied, too. "Recent and possibly temporary addition to the University faculty. What is your work?" He could never be sure how his words affected another person unless he was immersing himself in their aura, the which he was not doing now. There were too many auras to track to wade safely through this sea of daggers. But he was genuinely interested. In Syliras, though his family was wealthy due to his father's trade, his mother had kept busy at things that suited her skills, and the Aelius children were all raised to a strict work ethic. Of course, he had noted the slip into a baser dialect, but his own rang of Syliras. He was educated, and spoke correctly, but he spent much of his time in sailors' dens and the like, having taken to heart the lesson that one could not gain true wisdom locked in the ivory tower of academia, and yet here he was, schmoozing with the rich and powerful of Zeltiva, famed for its University.

[Montaine]

Monty sipped at his drink. So the chap was a university man, a lecturer too, by the sounds of it. Of course being a member of faculty could have meant he simply cleaned out the piss buckets but it seemed unlikely that such a person would have been invited to as highfalutin a party as the one in which they were conversing. Unless they were some really expensive piss buckets. No, it was far more likely that he taught some manner of skill or theory. At least he wasn’t another shyking merchant. ‘I make glass, down in the city. More often’n not for your lot, up at the school, actually,’ he rubbed his chest, his breathing was still sore, as it had been all summer and he still couldn’t figure out why, ‘Only recently I started to get a bit more money, an’ after the storm I made the grave error of usin’ it to help people that needed it, hence my presence here,’ he indicated the nattering gathering with his wine glass, ‘Apparently usin’ your money to help people’s so alien to them that it’s worth invitin’ the poor sap what done it up to eat fancy food and drink this stuff,’ he shook his head, ‘The irony’s not lost on me, but sure ain’t caught them,’ He had very nearly turned down the invitation in the first place and certainly considered not attending. It would not have been unbelievable for him to fall sick; in fact he feared his frailty was one of the qualities about him which the wealthy patrons of such parties found so endearing. In the end Calbert had convinced him that attendance was beneficial to all involved as if he ever wanted to find success as a glassworker he would need the ears of both the wealthy and the mercantile, both of whom were represented together by the guest list. His boss had also subtly implied that he might be able to persuade one or two to lend their purses to needier causes than raw fish and imported wines. This, alas, had been a gross overestimation of the charity of Zeltiva’s great and good. ‘So what about you, Mister Aelius? University’s a big place, plenty o’ jobs goin’, what precisely is it you’re teaching?’ he craned up at the man whose full height was slowly becoming apparent, ‘You sailor or scholar?’

[Hadrian]

Had Montaine mentioned the piss buckets, Hadrian might have explained the difference between faculty and staff, but then he probably would have sounded priggish, so it were best left alone. He did listen with genuine interest, though. "Ah, I am filling in for Professor Stonemiller, so I see many students wishing to learn about magic." He sounded bored by that; they all wanted him to initiate them in this discipline or that, when he wanted to teach them about magic, finding the theory infinitely more interesting. Add to that, initiation without training was a recipe for disaster and he hadn't the time to train a thousand and one students in reimancy or voiding, not and keep up with his duties. "But I studied anthropology and magical theory when I was a student; I'm most interested in how magic has shaped culture, but that is all very boring unless one has a scholarly bent similar to mine. Suffice it to say, I think about many random things, sifting through for the things which could be useful to us as a people." He sighed. "I suppose I sound very altruistic. Well, I think it's altruism got me invited, in fact. But I may have a contract for you at some point, for windows. And other things, too. But... hm... perhaps someday I should call on you in your shop. Where is it?"

[Montaine]

‘We’ve got a workshop down on Chadelia Street, just off the market road, and a stall down by the potters. Make a fair bit of business all said an’ done, but glass tends to be expensive, a luxury, so it ain’t for times of famine or for the poorer folks who’ve got to make do with shutters and wood an’ clay,’ Montaine frowned. Around them the rich and powerful blithered on about grain prices and trade agreements and issues of banditry and animal attacks on the roads but so few of the words broke through the young man’s apathetic ears It all mingled and mixed in the air, jumbled gibberish that made no sense, that didn’t matter, as cacophonous as the workshop in full swing yet without the comfort of familiar noise. It was a whole different tune to that which he was used to. He did not like it. ‘Tell me, Mister Aelius, why is it that charity or altruism is so remarkable as to be worth an invitation here? Way I sees it, if someone needs somethin’ you got and you don’t need, I mean, if they need it it’s only right to help, isn’t it? It’s just sense, but they call it charity as though it were somethin’ good or strange, they say it’s altruism to help some poor petcher who ain’t got nothin’ to eat, well it ain’t, not where I’m from. It’s just-you just do that stuff, you know?’ the glassworker shook his head and exhaled, ‘Tell me, Mister Aelius, why is it that helpin’ someone is anythin’ notable?’ His glass was almost empty and the food was hardly filling and he was surrounded by people that he neither knew nor cared to know. The guests gabbled on and on without a care for anything but business, the incomprehensible wittering washing in through one ear and out the other. Monty looked around and shook his head again. Wealth was wasted on the wealthy.

[Hadrian]

He nodded, fixing the location in his memory that he might indeed visit later. Though he wanted to speak of heavy, thick glass windows that could withstand harsh winds, Montaine Redsun seemed more interested in understanding the people around him, the sort of people Hadrian took for granted having grown up among their Syliran cousins. Chlorine blue eyes strafed the room, then returned to Montaine. "The desire to help is a natural one," he said, waxing anthropological, but then that was his field of study. "Humans are herd animals when one gets down to it, and so the society of other humans is natural. But when we developed agriculture, built cities, our culture became more and more complex. Natural things gave way to man made things, and our natural inclinations became codified and modified to fit the criteria of a new way of life. These people may be out of touch with the simple, natural desire to help their fellow men, but they do feel the impulse. In civilization, they merely want recognition for their good works, because society has decided that altruism makes a person better, and they want the security and power of being better. "So one can judge them harshly, or just be glad that they are willing to use their wealth for the good of others now and then. I suppose."

[Montaine]

Montaine snorted, ‘I think I’ll go for harshly, meself. Bein’ helpful now and then ain’t nothing to brag about, bein’ helpful ain’t something what you can, what you can, what’s the word?’ he wiggled his fingers as he tried to scrape together whatever high lexis he has gleaned from Calbert, and his recent time spent up at the school, ‘Quantify! Tha’ssit isn’t it? It ain’t something you can count up. If you think, ah I done some charity today, that’s me in the people’s good books for another season, that ain’t right. You can’t quantify charity, them that try and do, they see it as a commodity, like money, an’ that just ain’t right,’ The glassworker peered into his empty glass. His accent was returning with a vengeance though whether it was due to the alcohol’s effect or his own relaxation around someone who seemed just as out of place as he himself, he couldn’t figure out. But his acquaintance, the scholar, had yet to compliment the earthy charm the other guests had so patronisingly commented upon and it gave him the chance to feel less trapped by this new, foreign territory. ‘Where you from, if’n you don’t mind me asking? ‘Cause I know you ain’t from round these parts, you don’ talk like a harbour boy, rich or poor,’ Monty squinted at the scholar, ‘An’ it’s subtle but there’s something in that voice o’ yours I don’ recognise all that much, so the way I figure it, you ain’t sailed here, not from your home anyways, which would mean you’re from inland, over the mountains,’ Monty smiled and nodded, satisfied with his reasoning, ‘That right? Don’t often get people in through the pass, usually they come by sea, see? So I figure you’re either from a long way off, from some place I ain’t never even heard of, or you’re from inland, am I right?’