One Never Knows (Mint)

On the day of the ball, Mint has many little duties to attend to. Only the day before, she'd had a discrete Trump call from Julian. He didn't say much, only that he wanted her to look after Fergus very carefully. From all the others had told him, the young man seems ardent and good of heart, very intelligent and with a refreshing viewpoint of the world. "I suspect," Julian had told her, "he will prove important in more than one way."

But that was yesterday. Today, Mint finishes getting ready. Castle gossip says Crown Prince Llyr fell in love with a Holy Sister of the Unicorn from one of the Golden Circle Kingdoms. A princess no less! And his heart might well be broken now that she's left Rebma for home--in the company of Triton no less!

On the way back to her apartment, to pick up something for the ball, she overhears a couple of chamber maids chatting:

"So this Fergus then--son of Bleys you reckon? Or Brand?"

"What, because of the red hair?"

"Of course! And what will all those prophecies they say were being told about him--just like Brand as like. Why else would he've been locked up in jail cell since he was a baby, eh? There's a taint in that one, taint of Chaos you ask me."

"Plenty of redheads in the world."

"Not in the House of Oberon!"

"Then what about his eyes?"

"Some kind of curse I bet. Marks him as something wrong. Who ever heard of someone with one eye gold as the crown, the other purple as a royal cushion?"

After that, the conversation turns to what a nice singing voice Bleys has and isn't it nice to have him back? Arrived this morning he did...

Mint lets just the slightest hint of menace creep into her voice as she walks by the chambermaids. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation..."

And she lets the pause go on just a half second too long.

"...where might I find Uncle Bleys this morning." She finishes with a smile.

The chamber maids look abashed, eyes large and faces pale, but at last one of them says Prince Bleys might be in his own apartments. As it happens those apartments are near Mint's own.

"Thank you." Mint replies, gently.

Once past the chambermaids the ghost of a smile passes over her face. Those two will think twice before badmouthing a royal again.

Mint makes a quick pit stop at her own room for her errand then heads to Bleys' room.

She knocks upon his door with a quick, but not exceptionally loud staccato. "Awake yet uncle?"

Atop of Mint's desk she spies something that take her a moment to recognize. It looks like a simple clay vase. Three hands in height, glazed to a pattern of black and white. Within the vase rises a flower the like of which she has not seen for years.

Back home it is called a Clockwork Daisy. The petals are white, fanning out from the center. Little dark patterns mark the edges all the way around, resembling at first glance the face of a timepiece. Hence the name. She's only ever seen this kind of flower in Iv. Nowhere else.

And Mint certainly did not put it there.

OOC: Mint proceeds from her room to Bleys' room as previously described.

"Enter!" says a cheerful, familiar voice from the other side of the door.

The antechamber of Bleys' apartments looks as it ever does--flamboyant, comfortable, not even slightly gaudy--with books and games and a small wet bar near several extremely comfortable seats. A second level can be reached via an elaborately carved wooden staircase that spirals up in one corner. Said upper level is only half the size of the lower one, revealing the multiple stained glass windows pouring colored light into the chamber (apart from the lamps esconced in the walls). A sword collection hangs on one wall--weapons of nearly three dozen different designs, some of them quite bizarre. One looks like a flattened crescent moon, hollow with leather handles on the inside. Its edges, razor sharp. Another was more of a glove, but one bristling with blades and hooks--it looked vicious and only-too-effective.

Bleys himself is descending the spiral stairs. He wears his usual outfit. As always, his hair is perfect, his beard and moustache coming to points that look sharp enough to draw blood.

"Mint! How delightful!"

"Always a pleasure Uncle"

She steps forward and offers him a hug.

She lets the greeting take the time it takes, refusing to rush the welcome of her beloved Uncle.

Finally she steps back, raises an eyebrow and asks, "Flowers?" She says it casually, but watches for the slightest nuance of his reaction.

He grins, a twinkle in his eyes. As ever. "Did you bring me any?" Mint knows him well enough to recognize a witty response to a non sequiter. He hasn't any idea what she's talking about.

"I found some from home in my room. Fi must have brought them."

Mint shrugs.

Time for gossip

"I have a week away from the woods and thus some time for kin, old and new. Not to say that you ever get old. I have had the 'pleasure' of meeting the twins, but not yet the cousin that Lord Benedict retrieved. The Kier seem oh so very young and quite strange. I would love to vivisect one of their worms and learn more of those who raised them. I do think them likely Eric's get as they claim. I would gladly interrogate those who raised them if any survive."

"Any news on your end of things? What do you know of the new family members?"

Bleys nods, grabbing a couple of glass goblets and pouring some excellent chilled wine, offering his niece one. Not terribly strong as wines go, but a delightful beverage all the same.

"No new kin as far as I know. Some strange tales to tell, including a few places where some Shadow of yours truly must have made a name for himself. One person even insisted he owed me money! But I did find myself wandering around a series of particularly damaged Shadows several weeks back. World after world that looked like a family of gods got into a nasty brawl. One was nearly frozen solid. Gigantic cities encased in ice. Animals and people frozen in place. But there was this one spot, an island of warmth and life amid white-cold wilderness. Like a living oasis in a frozen waste, perfectly circular as far as I could tell. I was intrigued, must admit! What I found at the center of the spot, though, intrigued me even more."

With a flourish, he pulls something from out his belt and tosses it upon the table before Mint. She recognizes it, or at least the back of the playing card looks familiar. It depicts a crimson unicorn.

"Another one. Interesting. The twins have one as well depicting a scarlet haired woman unfamiliar to me."

Mint reaches out and flips the Trump to get a look at the face.

The coldness of the card confirms it as a Trump. Its face is of the Minor Arcana, the Ace of Pentacles.

"Fascinating!" mutters Bleys. "There were over a dozen scattered on the oasis I spoke of. All of the Minor Arcana, like this one. Fiona mentioned the Trumps the twins brought. A scarlet-haired woman, eh? Maybe a long-lost relative?" He grins as he says this, but the idea clearly seems viable to him. "I'm wondering though how they got where they are, not to mention the impact they had on their environment. Been thinking about it on the way back and I have a theory. Care to hear it?"

"Definitely."

As she listens to Bleys, Mint will pull out a sketchpad and start to draw, not a trump sketch, but a sketch of the woman depicted on the Kier's Trumps.

Bleys sits down and looks at the Trump, all but curling his mustache. He likes to show off, does Uncle Bleys.

"First, I suspect those destroyed Shadows I came across were all in the path of a Shadow Storm. Or, given the level of devastation, a cluster of the things. Most likely, a direct result of the Patternfall War, when waves of such swept through areas of Shadow, laying waste to many places or reshaping others. Has anyone ever told you what might happen were one of us caught in such a storm?" He continues without waiting for an answer. "No one knows, for certain. Mostly because no one's willing to make the experiment. But Fiona and I discussed this with Dworkin years ago. We came to the conclusion that having the Pattern within our very selves would protect against the vagaries of Shadow Storms, at least any of the direct effects. Subsidiary effects might kill us quite easily. Like having a house fall on us, for example!"

"And this would hold equally for Trumps. "

"Which brings me to my point--that these strange Trumps were most likely scattered by a Shadow Storm, deposited in who-knows-how-many places, probably inherently acting as a counter to the forces of the Storms. Hence the little island of life and warmth I found."

"The real question is--who drew these Trumps? And what happened to them?"

Mint takes a couple of colored pencils from her pack and adds a bit of detail to her sketch.

"That makes sense. It also explains why the Shadow Storms largely bypassed Iv." ...except for the strange girl whose house fell from the sky.

Mint passes her sketch to Bleys. She watches carefully for any hint of recognition while she speaks.

"My guess, this woman either drew the Crimson Unicorn Trumps or knows who drew them."

Mint smiles conspiratorially.

"I have a more outlandish theory, speculation really, if you want to hear it."

Bleys looks at the drawing with a nod. "Oh please, I can hardly wait!"

"Father showed me once a number of Shadow Trump, pitiable weak things made by those not of the Blood. He warned me not to risk my life on such imitations. Such Trumps would not have the protections these have demonstrated nor the strength I can feel from such cards."

"If real Trump exist, backed by a Crimson Unicorn, then perhaps a second Unicorn exists as well. Heresy I know, and yet Father taught me that when searching for truth to exclude only the impossible and accept what remains however improbable. A second Unicorn could associate with the Pattern which Corwin drew. I mislike the timing. It might also suggest the existence of a second Amber, call it Ruby if you will. I mislike that as well because that suggests the additional heresy that Amber exists not as the one true world, but as the first and greatest Shadow of some greater truth. And yet the timing works."

Mint sips the wine.

"If Ruby exists, we might never have encountered it. Our Pattern leads to our Shadows and Ruby's to her and never the twain would meet, until the Shadowstorm. A single traveller in the heart of the Storm transiting at just the wrong time might cross over. The storm might have scattered her deck while leaving the cards and her largely unharmed save of course for secondary effects. This suggests a number of avenues of exploration. Determine if any reality exists beyond Amber and proceed away from Amber from there. Transit to the courts and search out an Order separate from Amber. Find the woman and learn her story. Find one of these Crimson Unicorn Trumps of a place rather than a person and transit the continuums that way."

"Quite an elaborate house of cards, eh? A simpler explanation no doubt exists, but damned if I can see it."

"An impressive house of cards indeed! Of course, I can think of at least one other possibility, as it happens. What if the mysterious copper-tressed beauty," he gestures to her drawing, "is merely close to the maker of these Trumps, whose design is more of a personal sigil than any specific meaning beyond that? While in some ways simpler, this leaves the puzzling question still--who made these Trumps?"

"Then again, the two are hardly mutually exclusive--and I can tell you frankly that the relationship between Amber and Pattern is not as straightforward as even those in the know generally believe."

"Has anyone tried to contact the young lady via her Trump?"

"To the best of my knowledge only Aunt Fiona without success. The twins claim to have never tried either card depicting the woman."

If the back is a sigil, then it should have some sense of the creator. After all it too partakes of the magic of the Trump albeit indirectly. I wonder what would happen if...

Mint takes the Crimson Unicorn Trump and begins to examine the back closely, not entirely opening her mind quite so much as if to contact this strange Unicorn, but seeking any sort of psychic impression or sense of who might have made this card.

It feels...different somehow. Mint lacks the experience in comparing the feel of differently created Trumps (well, doesn't pretty much everyone lack that?) so she can't really pin much down. For what it is worth, the card doesn't feel particularly 'new.'

Of course, the colors are those of the late, lamented Prince Eric.

Mint frowns.

"Definitely a mystery, and not one we will solve today I wager. Still we both have preparations for the party and I should not keep you overlong this day.

Mint turns to leave then turns back,

"Do you know of anyone in the family other than Fiona or Yourself who knows the location of Iv? Father kept the place rather well secluded and I know the flowers are a message. It seems almost certain that Fi sent them, but in the unlikely event that she did not I may have to consider them a threat."

Mint bites her lip.

"Your father knew, and in truth who knows who might have heard it from him? I myself have told no one and if Fiona says the same my bets are on her telling the truth. In this, anyway. Yet another mystery for us to solve then!"

"I will let you know if Aunt Fi did not send the flowers. Thank you, Uncle."

Mint excuses herself and finds her way to Fiona's room. There she knocks and calls "Aunt Fi."

If she gets no response then Mint will return to her room, pull out her Trump deck and call Aiden, Reena, and Triton in that order.

OOC:Out of Fiona, Aiden, Reena, and Triton hopefully someone will answer. I'm just giving you the list so we can skip over the ones who don't answer to the first who does. Thanks.