Chương 118: Chapter 115: On The Scale.

"Marry into my house, and you will have your grain." I knew what the Duke was going to say before he had said it. It was the one thing I had been trying to avoid, even as I had known it might happen anyway. I had suspected this from the moment Cordelia had first told me that House Solair could feed all of Aelheim with what amounted to a rounding error for them. A House that wealthy had so much coin that coin was no longer worth anything.

Normally, even at my station, a proposal this fine should have been impossible. The daughter of a fading Great House on the edge of the Kingdom did not get to marry into a House like Solair. That was the whole reason Cordelia's betrothal to House Bulwark was the victory it was. But I was a Hero now. And ever since the parade I knew that my stock -the word turned my stomach even as I thought it- had risen rather considerably. One of the newspapers I had read had called me the Kingdom's most eligible Lady.

There were probably a dozen letters waiting for me back in Aelheim already, each one from houses that probably didn't know my name last week. The first thing I did when I went back home was to reject every single one of them. The plan I had come with in this city was now a mess. But it wasn't like I could let the Duke in front of me see that. So, I sat very straight, and answered him immediately.

"No." Duke Solair's eyebrows rose a fraction high.

"I came here to set your grain against my Artifact and the appropriate amount of gold," I said.

"I have no intention of placing myself on that same scale to balance it." It was a refusal that was firm, without being rude. Duke's Solair's eyebrows rose another fraction. He looked like he had asked me about the weather outside and I had answered him by reciting a cooking recipe. The steward leaned forward and murmured something into his ear.

"Ah, it seems there has been a misunderstanding. I see the confusion now," Duke Solair said. He settled back into this seat.

"Forgive me, it is my fault for not clarifying the exact terms. I do not mean some petty cousin, or the son of a sister house or even the son you have already met today." He smiled.

"I mean my son and heir. Edward. He is a couple years older, but there should be no issue."

"There has been no misunderstanding, Duke Solaire. I am not interested in any arranged marriage. Not to a cousin. Not to an heir. Not to anyone." The man's smile faded. He frowned at me. He stared for a long moment, and the warmth I had seen earlier thinned.

"Do you have an overly high opinion of yourself, child? Now that you are a Hero?"

"My opinion of myself is exactly where it has always been. Even if I were a pauper on the street, I would refuse this." I held his gaze. I hoped he could see that I was completely serious. I knew some of why he was finding this so hard to believe. What I was telling him must have sounded insane. It was one thing to be principled, this was something else entirely. Still, it was the truth, and I did not want to waste each other's time.

I was doing all of this to save Cordelia from an arranged marriage, I could not very well go and get myself trapped in one now. I was not sure how to say any of this, not in a way that would be firm, while still staying polite. So, for a long moment, I said nothing at all. The steward leaned in again. This time I almost did turn up my hearing. The Duke nodded slowly.

"I see," he said. He laced his fingers across his stomach.

"Are you perhaps trying to tell me that you wish for grain, and something more, in exchange for your hand?" I was trying very hard not to groan. Defiance. I don't need the reminder, Vaelin.

"Duke Solair," I said, and I made each word slow and clear.

"I am trying to tell you that if you waved your hand and made every single problem I have in this world disappear -every last one- and all I had to do in return was accept a marriage proposal." I paused.

"I would refuse you. I hope I have made my decision perfectly clear now?" For a moment, Duke Solair just looked at me without saying anything. Then he sighed, and shook his head. The puzzlement left his face at last, replaced by a tired sort of acceptance.

"I see," he said.

"You really are serious."

"I am."

"Heroes." He said the word with a rather strange emphasis.

"They're always strange. One never knows what they are thinking." I did not correct him. It was not the Hero in me that had refused. Well, if this explanation made it easier for him to understand without taking offense, then so be it.

"You have met others?" I asked.

"Heroes, I mean."

"I've met the only two we've had in recent memory," He held up two thick fingers.

"Aziah Storm, our current First Sword." He lowered one finger.

"She says in three words what most men take three hundred to say." He lowered the other.

"And Illiana Casper. She never met a locked door she did not want to kick open." I nodded slowly. I had asked out of idle curiosity. It wouldn't be a bad thing to know more about the other Heroes from someone who had met them. Still, it was just an aside. Nothing more. I pointed at the scale.

"Now, my lord. If you could return to the negotiation I am actually interested in? The one that involves no betrothal?" He looked at the brass scales for a long moment.

"There is no point," he said. I went still.

"Without the marriage, the deal simply is not interesting enough." He spread his hands, and his tone was not unkind.

"You offer me coin, but I can find coin anywhere. I barely know what to do with all the coin I already have. Coin is the least interesting thing in the world. And besides, now that I know an Artifact like this exists." He nodded at the scale.

"In time, I expect I can find something close enough. I have whole vaults of stranger things." A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. What could I say to that? That was the trouble with House Solair. They did not merely have an obscene amount of food. They had an obscene amount of food, and a line half a mile long of people who would crawl to receive it. They could choose who they dealt with, and who they did not.

I had walked in here with the one Artifact I thought might tip the scale in my favor, and to a man like this, it was a curiosity. I cursed myself, silently, and kept my face calm.

"Why?" I asked.

"Why do you want me wed into your house at all? You are aware that being a Hero is not something passed down by blood. My children, if I ever have any, would be ordinary." He shrugged.

"There would be prestige."

"Prestige." I said slowly, keeping the venom out of the word.

"For as long as I am alive. That seems a very small reason to join two houses together for good." He looked at me, and for the first time since I had refused him, he looked truly amused.

"Even the most powerful men," he said, "are simply men in the end. And men are ever petty." I blinked.

"What is that supposed to mean?" The Duke smiled.

"Bulwark," he said, "has spent the better part of two decades trying to make his eldest son a Hero. He has been buying every Godblade he can lay his hands on -hunks of dead, rusted metal- in the hope that one of his sons might wake one and bond to it." He shook his head slowly.

"He is bitter, you see. The First Sword of the Kingdom has not been a Bulwark in a very long time. There was a tradition there, once. First it was Illiana. Now it is Aziah." Cordelia had not mentioned anything like this to me. Likely because she herself hadn't known.

"And so," the Duke went on, "I simply thought it would be amusing. It would be amusing to walk a real living Hero through my doors as my son's bride, while Bulwark keeps filling his vaults with useless iron. I stared at him.

"That is a truly petty reason." The Duke smiled wider, and did not deny it. Well, now that I knew his motivation, as petty as it was, perhaps there was a way to use it.

"Surely an alliance would serve the same purpose," I said.

"Duke Bulwark is allied to Duke Greenward. If House Solair were to ally itself to House Veyne, it would be the same thing. You would have your jab at him without binding our blood together."

"He is allied by betrothal," the Duke said gently.

"By a joining of houses. If you are proposing anything else, it is not the same thing. It does not say what a marriage says." I had nothing to answer that with. He rose from his chair, smoothing the plain dark cloth of his coat.

"It is not as though I am the only man in the Kingdom who can supply you," he said.

"If all you have to offer me are coins and Artifacts, then there are people in this Kingdom who can trade in those. If you do not find someone in this Kingdom, then there are others. The shipments will be slower perhaps, but they will arrive. If all you want is to free your city from Julian, then you can." He inclined his head, just slightly. It was a dismissal, dressed in helpfulness. Damn it. There was nothing to do now. I let out a slow breath.

"Very well," I said.

"Perhaps I will look elsewhere, just as you have suggested." The Duke nodded, as though I had finally said something sensible. He turned toward the door. Then he paused, one hand resting on the back of his chair, and looked back at me.

"By the way," he said.

"I would like you to come to my manor today. You, and your friends. For a feast." I stared at him.

"And what," I said, "would be the occasion for this feast?"

"A ducal house has come to my city." He spread his hands, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"What sort of savages would we be, to let them pass through without so much as a single dinner?" He paused and something shifted in the set of his face.

"And my daughter did wish to meet you." He looked at me, and waited.

"Will you attend?" I almost sighed. I had failed at the only thing I had crossed a Province to do. But there was no sense in adding insult to it, and no sense at all in spitting on the hospitality of one of the most powerful men in the realm, however annoyed I was.

"We will attend," I said. The Duke nodded.

"I will send a carriage." Then he and his steward were gone. It took all of two seconds before Sere appeared at my side, notepad already out, as she held a drawing up toward me. It was the Duke. She had rendered him as an enormous boulder, all shoulders and stomach, with two tiny legs underneath that had no business holding the rest of him up. I smiled, just a little, and reached over to ruffle her hair. Her pencil moved. She turned the page around. Not a bad man. I did sigh now. Properly.

"No," I said.

"I suppose not. Not that it makes any of this better." The door burst open. Violet was at the head of the small band. She crossed the floor in three strides, seized my shoulders, and shook me hard enough that the room blurred.

"What happened? Did it work? Did you get what you wanted?" Her words all spilled over each other, but I knew her well enough to know what she meant. I looked at her. I looked past her, at Damian and Anias filing in behind. Well, it was time to give the bad news. The explanation did not take long. There was not much to explain. He wanted me on the scale, and I would not get on it. So there had been no deal.

"That damn jerk!" Violet slammed her fist into the arm of the couch hard enough that the wood groaned beneath it. I made a mental note to apologize to the people we were renting this place from.

"He wants you to what?" She said this part especially sharply. It was a good thing the Duke had left, or Violet might have attacked him. I had collapsed onto the far end of the same couch, the one she was busy abusing, and lay staring up at the ceiling.

"It's not like we didn't expect it," I said.

"That's what your whole smart plan was supposed to be for!"

"Well. It was smart." I let my eyes close.

"Maybe it just wasn't smart enough." Violet muttered something under her breath. It was, I was fairly certain, an extremely creative thing to call a Duke.

"And now we're going to a dinner," Damian said. I did not need to see to know that he probably had his arms folded and his jaw set.

"Whatever fine food they put in front of us, it'll taste bitter."

"Probably," I agreed, eyes still shut.

"Apparently this is etiquette."

"My Lady." I opened my eyes. Anias had not moved from the wall, her hands folded in front of her. Her voice was quiet.

"Perhaps," she said, "all hope is not lost." I turned my head toward her.

"What do you mean?"

"Many lords visit Myrrheim. Constantly. Even in that long line we saw in the morning, some of those men were Lords," She tilted her head.

"Duke Solair does not invite them all to dine at his manor. If he did, he would do nothing but host dinners from one sunrise to the next." That made sense. House Solair sat at the center of half the Kingdom's commerce. Lords and ladies of every rank must have passed through this city and the Duke could not have feasted a tenth of them and still had time to count his grain. So why us?

He had said that a ducal house had come to his city but only the most rabid Aelheim patriot alive would have claimed House Veyne stood anywhere near House Solair. We were a courtesy, at best. He didn't need to host us. Wait, that hadn't been all he'd said. My daughter did wish to meet you. What was that then? Obviously a man that powerful wouldn't actually use that excuse, which meant it was a pretense of some kind. A pretense for what, I was not sure. Did it matter?

"He's still interested," I murmured.

"Or at least intrigued enough that he values keeping us happy." Anias inclined her head. Damian, after a moment, nodded too. Violet looked between the three of us with her brow furrowed. She tilted her head.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" This time it was I who leaned forward, and seized her shoulders, and shook her.

"It means," I said, and I grinned, "there's still a chance." It was just a chance. The barest one possible. It was still better than I'd had seconds ago. Anias really was very useful.