Chương 1123: Day One Thousand One Hundred And Twenty-One

Dear Diary, Y'know, I think I like diplomatic contract negotiations less now than I did when I couldn't understand any of it. Seriously, back in the day when the Marshall and I both noped out of writing the Alliance Treaty, just stopping in to make sure Ophelia wasn't being too big of a bitch and Lancaster understood that trying to leverage the already big chunk of power I handed him would wind up losing him his hands, I really didn't understand any of that shit.

I hadn't had my class on Law and Custom yet, nor did I really have any experience with that kind of thing. Yeah, I'd run the Phileo Council meetings a couple times, but that was more being an obstruction than trying to come to any kind of an agreement. Seriously, my entire goal there was to make sure we voted to declare war, then make sure nobody undeclare that shit before we finished making sure New Amsterdam knew not to fuck with us ever again.

Or at least for the foreseeable future, which now that I've accepted that I am in fact immortal means something different to 'forever'. I also sat through the whole fiasco with Boltophsberg's new constitution. Okay, 'fiasco' isn't entirely fair.

Perun's 'Men of Fire' misunderstanding might have permanently made it so I can't look at him without chuckling ever again, and the same goes double for their Adventurers' new 'official uniforms', which make it look like they're auditioning for a part in a remake of Labyrinth that requires them to have detachable heads. Mmm... Jareth. Where was I? Oh, right, Boltophsberg's goofy lookin' Men of Fire.

Of course, for all that, they still stepped up and did their best to protect folks from becoming collateral damage when it came time to fight the Kaiju, so I'm not gonna mock them. Their fashion sense, maybe, but them, no. Thing is, I kinda had to keep paying attention that time, because I needed to catch Baba Yaga's signal to punch Perun in the taint. Which meant I heard a lot of the ongoing discussions, especially the parts where the folks from the Alliance talked about codifying Laws and Customs.

I'm not sure if every word or phrase in legalese means the same thing here and now as it did back in the day, but I know the here and now definitions. Some of them I've got to cudgel my brain on, because even if my Memory is unholy high, that just means the stuff goes in and doesn't leak back out. It doesn't mean I can find that shit again quickly. Thing is, the past couple, I dunno, weeks? It can't be weeks, except maybe by Menace's 'eight days is weeks' definition.

So for the past several days I've listened to the Captains go over their various Articles of Agreement, then spent a couple days listening to Saffron read and explain our Alliance Treaty to them. The Articles of Agreement I found kind of fascinating, even if I'll never admit that to anyone. But the entire dichotomy between 'pirates' and 'experts in contract law' made it just weird enough that I think I caught most of it.

The review of the Treaty would have been pretty boring, but I could listen to Saffron read a fuckin' eighty year old's grocery list, which as we all know is 'applesauce', 'mashed potatoes', and 'fiber', and I'd still never really get bored. Distracted thinking about her mouth, yes. Bored, no. But today the negotiations started. Reading legal documents is objectively boring, even if the aforementioned oddity and fantasizing kept my attention. But negotiations are just not my jam.

At the end of the family therapy session yesterday, which went pretty well, for all that my part was mainly thanking my whole family for making my birthday as awesome as any of theirs. Menace disagreed entirely because I hadn't flown, not even once. I chose not to argue with her, because the things I prefer to flying are not for little ears. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

At any rate, we got home, got some food, which included some of Marie's trial runs of her new mega-crunchy chicken tendies. She'd managed to warm them up without turning them rubbery or losing the crunch, which I think I could do with a hot oven or maybe a deep fryer, and her savory sweet syrup gravy was, as always, delightfully awesome. Somehow I could still maybe smell some of the funk from my birthday before I hit the shower.

Don't know how that could happen, with me getting a shower before heading to Mom and Dad's place, but just to be clear that's not a complaint. It hadn't gone sour yet, and when it's even close to fresh I really like that smell. Dreamt of my ladies watching reruns of Siobhan's ordination on the big screen. Nommed them like popcorn, because that was some must see TV. After breakfast, Saffron pulled me along to the Scribes' Guild, where Vince had four hundred copies of the Alliance Treaty ready for us.

"We're still working, we'll have the rest before sunset." Saffron just nodded, then said, "we'll stop back after lunch to pick up as many as you have ready?" He looked a little whelmed, but nodded gamely and said, "I'll get back to work then." I know I probably shouldn't have, but I Co-Located as Saffron and I stepped to the helipad of the Black Dragon. I sent one of me to class, because I really did want to get some research done, and another of me stepped home to spend some quality time with the kids.

In class I got Doc to recommend a few books regarding Global Spells. How to make and emplace them was what I wanted, but other than one really gnarly tome what I got was four books of varying quality describing four existing Global Spells. One of which was Franklin's Inspect, written by Franklin himself. I didn't say no to that one, because it would have been weird, but I sure as shit put that fifth on the reading list. So I spent most of the day reading that one, as noted, gnarly tome.

Like, the wood of the cover wasn't flat, and didn't look like it ever had been. The leather covering that hadn't aged well, and the color and texture made me suspect it was human skin, or at least Human Adjacent skin. I'm not even going to talk about the grammar, because... Ugh. Worse, the overall 'structure' of the tome... Wasn't.

It wasn't a story, it wasn't a curated textbook, it was some old dude's notes from like two thousand years ago, but apparently the dude who wrote it was the only other known 'Legendary Archmage'. Most of my time at the Homestead wound up monopolized by Aisling. Okay, that's not really fair to say, because other than clinging to me she didn't really want me to do much, but I tried to talk to her a little bit. Asked her which her favorite foods were, or if she liked the bath.

The answers were 'potato' and 'maybe', and even that took some coaxing. Finally, when the two of us walked into the conference room, the Captains were waiting there.

"Are those the copies of your Treaty?" John asked.

"They are, although only four hundred. The rest should be completed by the end of the day, although I'll be stopping by the Scribes' Guild after lunch to see how many more they've completed." Anne let out a low whistle.

"How many Scribes did you set to doing this?" Saffron shrugged.

"I've honestly no clue. The head of the Guild assured us he could do it though."

"What did you bribe him with?" asked Red. Yeah, I kinda choked on my spit at that, and it did not get worse when Saffron just smiled and maybe glanced at me and my breathing difficulty. I set the pile of paper on the desk and said, "you want any help distributing those?" Red sucked his teeth.

"Have you reviewed them for copying errors?" Saffron shrugged.

"We have not. We came straight from the Guild to here." Credit where it's due, Red sighed, shrugged, and pulled a solid chunk off of the top, then pulled out the nice copy we'd given him last week.

"Better we check now than wind up with some of the men misinformed and arguing over it." So I discovered that along with making me able to wrangle old gnarly tomes, Blend also lets me pick out copying errors pretty well. The stewards brought us some Mana Pens; luckily all three Captains could work them. Yeah, this was not a fun day. Could have been worse, though. At least I got to play with the kids.