Magic of the Marriage Market

While Farran's adult siblings were all obsessed with Derbie's proposal to Lady Ban, or Blair's unexpected Courtship with Earl Wignell, Farran had been all but oblivious. Her last rejection from the Diplomatic Bureau to join the Exchange Project had finally prompted her to tell Alaric about her intentions to join, and how that required his approval; Alaric had arrogantly informed her that he already knew of her previous, and failed, attempts.

But then he'd also told her that not only was her secret spilled by the Diplomatic Bureau, but he'd been written to directly by Vellan, trying to help settle his concerns by explaining in detail how Farran would be under his protection in Cador, how their culture had coming of age at 16 so she'd be treated with the respect and authority owed to any adult, and how she'd even have King Kai Tuccillo's protections once all the ceremonies were completed.

Her secret had been exposed, and all because both Vellan and the Diplomatic Bureau had assumed after months of exchanged that she'd finally discussed the matter with her guardian. Too bad she still hadn't, though Farran felt a little umbrage because she had INTENDED to, but then Fabrizio Lazzarini had attacked Hida, Blair started dating Earl Wignell, and Derbie got engaged to Lady Ban. Those all somehow seemed far more significant than Farran's desires to join the Exchange to Cador. So, when Alaric started to lecture her on how important it was to communicate forthrightly and with complete honesty, Farran decided to give it to him.

"I would have pulled the trigger," she hadn't needed to specify what for, "if I needed to. I am not losing any sleep over what might have happened, or how close it could have been. I'm simply glad I was there to help Hida when she needed it." Alaric wasn't arguing, and more importantly, it looked like he was listening, "but now I need to do this. I need to join this Exchange and go explore Cador and see who I can grow into there."

The night Hida had been attacked had given Farran a sense of confidence she'd lacked. At the time, all she'd been aware of was that he loud crash of broken glass and wood wasn't normal, and she'd grabbed the pistol out of her travel locker, ensuring it was loaded. She hadn't heard anyone scream, but Farran was certain she was hearing sounds of struggle from Hida's room. If she'd been wrong, she probably would have scared Hida and ended up in trouble, but she hadn't been wrong. The door to Hida's room opened and she saw someone slashing at a bloody version of her baby sister, and suddenly she not only knew she could pull the trigger, but that she'd lose no sleep over it at all.

"Hida has always been our Knight, the fighter who will one day be a Hero, but I think she's only the youngest Warrior our family has," Alaric's compliment shut Farran's argument up. "I'm scared to let you go, but I know you're capable Farran, and more than that, you've proven you can take action in an emergency." He had actually agreed to let her go on the Exchange if the Diplomatic Bureau approved it.

Farran had once again written to the Exchange Project, this time able to present both a letter from Duke Vellan Dorland and Alaric's written and signed approval to apply. She had already increased her letters to them from once to twice weekly, so they'd likely been awaiting her latest response, but that hadn't made the length of time for their response any shorter. Her impatience was only mollified when Vellan's latest letter arrived.

m'eudail Farran

I find myself not at all surprised to read your last letter, if ever there was a young woman bold enough to fire a shot, it would have to be you. What's holding a villain at gunpoint to someone who is daring enough to leave their home behind long before they ever discussed the idea with those in authority?

And I predict your deserved ire for writing to your eldest sibling to try and add my support for your participation. Be mad at me Farran but do so to my face; come to Cador and yell at me in person. By now I believe you'll have obtained Alaric's approval, and no doubt you've already once again written to your Diplomatic Bureau, so I can only hope this letter will reach you slightly before your acceptance to be the Tarotan component of the Exchange.

King Kai is also enthusiastic with you joining the Dorland Duchy once you arrive, he was as impressed by your indestructible Sash as I was, though I refused to send it to him for his own battery of tests. My King is encouraged by your boldness, and said if I am in such agreement, it'll be considered done; he's also grateful that the 'Royal response' can finally be made public in both Kingdoms. My eldest cousin has been waiting for this for a long while; once you're here I can explain in more detail but really, once you're here you'll understand.

Even after you're approved for the Exchange, it'll take you a fair bit of time and travel to reach here, but it should be less than that required to traverse the great expanse of your own Kingdom. Depending on how long your farewells may be, you could even be in Cador before the end of the month, though I suspect that is a matter of optimism instead of practicality. If I force myself into serious pragmatism, I am more aware that the soonest I could expect to receive you will be next month, but one can always hope. Willow and Pierce are almost as excited to meet you, once you get permission let us all know immediately.

Vellan

Farran had looked that word up the first time he'd written it to her. Obviously, it was old Cadorian, the language they'd used before the main continent had adopted a universal trade language, but unfortunately the book Farran had to translate it only identified it as similar to Dear One. Given that he used it to start his letters to her, she suspected it was the Cadorian version of Dear Farran; hopefully it wasn't something more insulting, in their letters Vellan had proven to have quite a playful sense of humour so it was unlikely but not impossible.

They'd shared stories of their siblings, so she knew Willow and Pierce were his younger twin siblings, he'd told her the sorrow of his mother's passing after birthing them and how his father had held despair at bay until Vellan was of age. She'd regaled him of the realities being a sixth child entailed, the love she was surrounded by that still couldn't dispel her urge to go.

She thought about actually travelling to Cador, especially the Dorland Duchy, and experiencing life as they did. It was now mid July, though only just, and if she was approved to so she'd still need at least a week to properly prepare; no doubt Alaric would be one step behind her double checking everything like the worrywart he was. And her siblings would delay her several days as well, all with loving farewells. The only reason Edwina had escaped such escapades was due to the time constraints of her invitation to gallery at the university; Farran would have no such luck.

Especially as her absence would be for years. She'd miss Derbie and Lady's Ban's marriage, she'd miss when Blair would get engaged to Lord Wignell, and she may even still be gone when their parents returned. Those were the once in a lifetime events she'd be voluntarily missing out on to be a part of this Exchange, but still Farran wanted desperately to go. Now it was as much to explore Cador as it was to meet Vellan in person so she could see for herself if he was as friendly as his letters made him seem. The actual journey to the Cadorian Capital would take over a week, so like his letter said she'd likely be there in August once she got approval.

A knock at her bedroom door brought her out of the bemused reverie the letter had left her in, and Farran opened the door to see Hida standing there. After almost a month, the bruises had all faded and the stiches in her scalp were less red and obvious, but her adorably pink seeming hair was still astonishingly short. Fabrizio had cut parts off of it off, uneven lengths that had led her to cutting it all to a uniform shortness despite some locks retaining their length. Her sister had barely seemed bothered by it, more annoyed at how the stitches itched as she healed than how scandalous it was for a noble to have an all but shaved head. Farran had gotten mostly used to seeing Hida without her hair clubbed back in braids, but since it was rarely worn down it wasn't terribly missed.

"Can I come in?" Hida didn't barge in where Blair would have, but she still had their sister's directness.

"Of course," Farran led her to the semi crowded sitting area, her trunk taking up a fair bit of space. Since she'd gotten Alaric's permission to apply to the Exchange Project, Farran had told her other siblings about her aspirations, so her trunk required repacking for all the extra items they'd all given her.

Hida actually sat on the trunk, leaving the only real seat for Farran, "the investigation by the Information Bureau has concluded," Hida summarized what Farran already knew. Despite the Lazzarini's trying to claim Hida lured Fabrizio to her home to attack him, it'd been proven he was the aggressor and at fault.

"Were you even concerned that they might believe the Lazzarini's spin 온라인카지노게임?" Hida's endless self-assuredness could be hiding major insecurities.

"No, they'd have to prove I tried to entice Fabrizio, and there's multiple witnesses who could describe how the opposite is true; I antagonize him and vice versa. His case was also hindered by the lack of weapon on me, and the damages he inflicted," she gestured to the curve of her skull at the back of her head.

The stitches were neat, and as small as could be done, but the black threads stood out against the pale skin and pink hued hair. There were smaller cuts, requiring only a few stitches, but the overall effect was an almost patchwork aesthetic on her sister's scalp. And given how her magic worked, Farran wondered if those stiches were spelled or just simple thread, or if another type of magic was involved; the magic of hard earned experience. She had no desire to try and knit flesh back together, but Farran could see how someone might find it fascinating.

"I wanted to tell you that in the future the shadows showed me, when Fabrizio was trying to kill me, you had to pull the trigger to save me. You're my hero Farran, and I didn't want you to slip off to Cador before I had the chance to tell you that. I just also had to wait for the investigation to end," Hida's commentary silenced Farran, and she listened while her baby sister explained what she'd hinted at before. Hida's visions weren't just daydreams of a confident imagination; she saw herself as a Knight, saw more scars from damages that hadn't happened yet, and explained in detail to Farran what she'd seen and what the changed reality they experienced was.

"So, you used your precognition to try and chance the future?" she would have tried to verify too.

"I didn't put any great effort into changing it, but I tried to alter slight things and my own awareness seemed to have changed things. And yet the attack still occurred," Hida didn't seem any more bothered by seeing bits of the future and not being able to alter it than she did having been attacked by a nearly grown man.

"When you said you saw yourself as a Knight, I thought you were being positive and confident, maybe even a little poetic," Farran admitted, feeling a little silly; Hida had never been one for flights of fantasy.

"I know, you dismissed me about it, but Winnie and Blair took it seriously," Hida's shrug was eloquent. "My magic is still untampered and relatively unknown to me, I don't blame you for not trusting the depth of it yet. And I'm glad you didn't have to pull the trigger to save my life. Fabrizio's an ass but you shouldn't carry the burden of his death on your conscience."

Farran thought about it, tried to picture how she'd be feeling now if she had shot Fabrizio to save Hida. Maybe others would be tormented by it, but she just felt indifferent. "As your vision showed you, I would have pulled the trigger; I'm glad you're alive and any other result is secondary to that."

"You're a natural Farran, I don't need visions of the future to know you're going to do amazing things in Cador," Hida didn't try to flatter people, so Farran knew her baby sister meant the compliment wholly.

"What else have you seen?" Farran was going to take these shadow visions Hida had seriously.

"The Royal I will one day Guard, but he's also a foreigner. Before she left Winnie was trying to help me identify the man if possible, and Blair saw the emblem I sketches but didn't recognize it."

"Emblem?" Farran hadn't listened to Hida's visions before, but now she was determined to, "can you show me the emblem you saw?"

"I believe the original sketch is still in Winnie's drawing room, she also tried to draw the man based on my description," Hida made a gesture, "want me to go find it?"

"Let's both go," Farran suggested, knowing that with Edwina gone the drawing room would be a bit chaotic. Although Winnie was by far the most artistic of the siblings, she was also the messiest. Maybe those two traits went hand in hand.

As expected, the drawing room was absent the bodies that usually filled it but looked like they had been abandoned only moments ago. The paints were at least sealed, but charcoal and pencils were scattered all over. Farran even spotted one stuck into the melted wax of a candle stick. They shuffled through endless seeming sketches done in Winnie's fine hand, until finally Farran found a rougher looking drawing of a complicated Knot.

"He'd from Cador," Farran had been researching it enough. Hida looked at her expectantly, as if she believed Farran knew everything about their neighboring Kingdom. "Here we use the naming conventions to denote birth order, there they use the threads in these Knots to tell you about the person. You see these," she pointed to the four 'threads' that made the basis of the Know, "it tells us he's the fourth child of his family, and this," she pointed to the actual Knot pattern, "will tell you the family he's from if you know the colours used in it."

She'd memorized the Dorland Knot, hard not to when she'd been making the Sash for Vellan to test, but she didn't recognize this Knot even though it felt damningly familiar. "Back to my room, I need my books," she herded Hida back, having to dig through her own clutter to find the tome she needed. "If I'm not mistaken, this is the Knot of the Tuccillo family," she flipped from the book describing the Knots, to her Diplomatic course work, "Which means you'll likely be guarding – oh!" Farran felt a jolt of surprise hit her as she read and reread the passage to ensure she hadn't made a mistake. "Levi Tuccillo, youngest brother of King Kai Tuccillo."

Despite the declaration, Hida looked unsurprised, "I did know I'd be a Royal Guard, now I know who for."

"He's Duke Vellan Dorland's cousin," Farran blurted out, "the Cador noble who's agreed to host me while I'm a part of the Exchange."

"I wonder if this Levi is the Cadorian part of the Exchange," Hida's theory made sense. "Though for me to be his Knight means he's still here in another four years at least."

"If ever there was someone who could be Knighted before they Debuted, it'd be you Pinky," Farran meant what she said, even if she was also teasing her sister.

"Enjoy your journey to Cador, I hope it's everything you want it to be," Hida dismissed herself and left Farran alone with her thoughts.

Once the Exchange Project sent their approval for her application she could set out. The paradox of how close and how far that day had tormented her while she had to wait for it all the same.