XIX. OREAL
Black banners hung on the facade of Nanther Keep, the stodgy mansion-fortress of Melvaunt’s greatest family. White snow–white for now, until the grime of Melvaunt settled on it–sat upon its crenellations and blocky ornaments. Inside, Ystrien listened while his cousin Oreal talked. Ystrien had told his companions he needed to visit his mother’s family before they pursued Ulblyn’s lead; now, he wished they had objected more convincingly. Oreal was bragging about this and that–his brains, his strong arms, his luck with women, the fact that his father would be named Lord Envoy soon. For every boast there was also a complaint. The soap from Mulmaster he used to scrub away “the Melvaunt residue” would not be available until next year. People–even people Oreal and Ystrien’s own age!–clung to old-fashioned ideas about things. The great families of Melvaunt couldn’t unite around the sensible policies he knew all about. Slavers gave such a bad name to slavery.
Though he wasn’t especially humble or unopinionated himself, Ystrien couldn’t compete with his cousin. Ystrien’s recent adventures did not interest Oreal, despite being full of swordplay, magic, and pirates. Neither did his stories about his companions. The stalwart knight and his obsession with the slippery enchantress might have furnished the plot of a romantic ballad; the reserved scout from the south, where all the halflings apparently spoke to one another via their thoughts, could have been a character in one of Volo’s books. But Oreal only had time for Nanthers, Bruils, Leiyraghons, and his own ideas.
A chime rang somewhere in the keep.
“That will be lunch. You’ll find our table sufficient but by no means rich. My mother’s still observing the austerities of mourning, even though Grandfather Dundeld died half a year ago. Expect one cup of wine, cold ham, and no sauces.”
The hall where they had lunch was as gloomy as the rest of the mansion. Tapestries whose whole purpose seemed to have been to suggest only the possibility of color hung in dim alcoves, their subjects obscure. The table could have seated twenty, but there were just three besides Ystrien: Oreal, whose vivacity was as oppressive to Ystrien as the gloom; Oreal’s mother Libyette, dressed all in black and apparently weary of everything–food, mourning, politics, life; and Oreal’s teenage sister Lundera, who stared at her cousin out of hollow eye sockets and ate nothing.
“It was very kind of you to pay your respects,” said Libyette to Ystrien. “Your mother did well with you, and you may tell her I said so. You look like a young god.”
“Thank you. I will pass on your compliment, even if I don’t put it quite that way.”
Libyette permitted herself a faint smile. “Not all the Nanthers turn out so well. Oreal did, of course. But his little sister leaves something to be desired–she is thin and slatternly and very irritable.” Lundera said nothing; she had apparently heard this assessment before. “Compared to Dundeld’s youngest, though, she is passable. Killian Nanther is a blot on the family name.”
