Myca invited Lady Rosamund to accompany him to Oradea, on the very edge of the Great Plain, over which she could travel with ease through friendly territories back to her lord. Lady Rosamund, after taking counsel with Sir Gilbrecht, accepted that offer, and the course was laid out accordingly. Their route crossed the Olt River below Sibiu, skirting the territories of both Ioan Brancoveanu and the Prince of Sibiu. They planned to cross the Mures River at Alba Iulia, Tzimisce Chapter Seven where they could replenish their supplies in relative safety, as the local stapân was an ally of the Obertus, very much to the annoyance of Nova Arpad, the Ventrue prince of neighboring Medias. The final leg to Oradea was a long one but, thankfully, descended out of the high country into the rolling hills and lowland forests that bordered the Great Plain. Myca kept to himself the opinion that, once Lady Rosamund was actually in Oradea, Symeon was unlikely to permit her to depart again until some restitution was extracted from the hide of Jürgen of Magdeburg. The results of his silence would no doubt be educational for all concerned and perhaps succeed in teaching Jürgen, once and for all, that some things were outside his grasp and always would be. Unsurprisingly, Malachite also invited himself along on the journey and, after a day and night of severe inner struggle, Myca acquiesced to the Rock of Constantinople’s desire. There was not, after all, anything he could effectively do to forbid or prevent it, short of staking the man and shoving him in a neglected storage room somewhere for a year or ten, and that was the sort of breach in hospitality that Ilias would never condone. Malachite could follow their route or make his own with minimal effort. It was much better to have the man where an eye could be kept on him at all times, and they would arrive in Oradea together. Myca was still not certain how much he wished to tell Symeon concerning Nikita of Sredetz, but he was entirely certain he didn’t want Malachite giving his sire that news in his place. In public, and to his guests, Myca presented his most pleasant face, approving travel plans and the choices of the men responsible for organizing Myranda Kalis the expedition, telling Lady Rosamund and the knights of the sights they could expect to see along their intended route. Malachite added his own remarks, having traveled the region extensively himself, and between them they managed to paint a coherent portrait of the terrain they would travel through, and the people they were likely to meet. Their route included stopovers at three Obertus monasteries and passed through the territories of a half-dozen Cainite lords of consequence. Myca wrote to them all, announcing his intent to travel through their domains without lingering unnecessarily, requesting what hospitality they might choose to offer and the unfettered use of the roads passing through their lands. It was a formal nicety rarely observed any longer, Ilias had told him once, but it would likely make a good impression on those lords who kept faith with such gestures and would hardly damage his reputation with those who did not. In private, to Ilias, he did not bother to conceal his irritation. *** “I dislike the timing of this summons.” Myca paced the length of his study, a windowless room fully wide as it was long, lined in the bookcases that contained the documents and artifacts that he personally preserved from the Library of the Forgotten in Constantinople. It was a very satisfying room to pace in, with a fireplace to keep the mountain damp from the books, and a minimum of furnishings, creating a relatively warm and open space in which to work out tension. Myca paced when he thought, which Ilias found quite helpful when reading his lover’s occasionally opaque moods. Tzimisce Ilias sat cross-legged on one of the few pieces of furniture, a backless padded bench next to the writing desk, and watched silently, waiting for his companion’s train of thought to come to its next utterance. After a moment, it did. “It is almost too coincidental, given all the other factors at work.” Myca returned the way he’d come, the pearl-encrusted hems of his dalmatic swaying gracefully with the motion. “‘A matter of diplomatic importance,’ he said. Jürgen? There are nights when I believe that man was put in creation solely to vex me. The Tremere? Unlikely. Something else? The last Symeon wrote to me, he was playing peacemaker with Noriz’ little brood of monstrosities… Could that be it? Ilias, my correspondence chest.” Ilias already had the little lacquered wooden box open and extracted Symeon’s most recent letters, which had arrived late in the previous summer.
Tzimisce · Vampire