"I'm going to be back in the evening, once I've settled some other affairs to rest with ease," Song informed her cheerfully. "Would like a boy or two to keep me company, somewhere I can wash off the road dust and get comfortable. We'll have a poetry evening." Another golden boat procured, landed on her table, and he folded his hands in an unspoken 'that's all'.
Head turned to Duscan.
"Dear friend, I appreciate your tender sensibilities, and we will leave soon. Please, tolerate a little longer. Emer-jie, how much for his couriers to deliver where young Duscan points? As I mentioned, I will pay for him in weight of silver this time around."
 
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Emer had gone to sit at her desk, opening up a drawer and sliding a piece of parchment out. Laying it flat on her desk, her hand blindly reached for her quill and dipped it into the inkwell. Blotting it on another parchment, one that had seen many uses before, the proprietor of this pleasure house then began to write Song's preferences. "A room for the night, then? I doubt you would like to stay with him as he does not have his own bed."

Duscan eyed her warily. She smiled at him, and that made the bastard exhale heavily.

It went unspoken, that Emer had tracked him down one night and found him lying on his cot and sleeping off his day drinking. She had asked him of a favour, one he saw to it in order to earn coin. Months had gone by now, and Duscan could not help but think that Emer would ask him another favour. He remembered little about her when they ran in the same circles, but he remembered what the shroud allowed her to weave.

His eyes betrayed him, dropping to her emerald markings easily seen beneath her dress that showed the vines off.

"You be sure to see what value is in front of you, dear Duscan the Bastard." Emer said, still scratching away with her quill. "This fine man beside you has a wealth beyond currency. He would be invaluable as a friend, and you know my word is always good." She lifted her head, smiling at Duscan before settling her pleasantries to Song. "Has Dusky told you anything about Veyan marks on weavers?"

"I just met him not even an hour ago." Gone were the insults. This was the Bastard, guarded and patient. His eyes fixated on the harpy before him. "Only just learned his name is Gongzi a minute before I came into this office."

"Without knocking." Emer clicked her tongue in chastisement. She grabbed a glass filled with sand, pouring it over her wet ink to help it dry and set. She curved the page, letting the sand cascade back into the glass.
 
"But of course I'd spend the night. I would be tired!" gongzi laughed. "If that incurs additional spending, you only need to let me know how much, so we settle it justly. And fond as you are of deriding young Duscan, I would commend his restraint. I've had less friendly, and worse interactions, though for a drinkery tender it would have been the first one."

His clothes were pristine. It was genuinely hard to imagine this shiny beacon of smiles and almost absent-minded levity engaging in response to violence. No, he laughed, covering his mouth with fingertips.
"You aren't wrong about this scholarly one, he does have quite some value."

If she was a seer, after all, she'd have gotten some of the knowledge for free already.

"He has not, and I am very curious, now that the wine has lifted up my spirits." A gesture with a glass, another sip. "I've noticed your green vines and his black tears, but didn't want to spoil the reveal - the mystery seemed rather tender a subject, too."

Light eyes turned sideways to Duscan. Terrified of the madame, to the point of changing his act some, how peculiar. His head turned, eyeing the black tear streaks for a brief moment before he'd studied the glass, marking its patterns and musing about the cost. He leaned back before the sand was sifted back into the cup, and caught Emer's gaze.

"A fine man in the making is bound to make a few blunders. Please, forgive him for my sake?" The slightest curve and raise of the brows, eyes so pure and innocent a spirit of first snow would seem an ink stain. No magic to be seen but playful theatrics.
 
Duscan got up from his seat and began pacing the office. He had surely worn in the rug many times now, having often repeating this action every time he came to make such an order. Emer always made him stay awhile, to converse, to try and upsell other wares she had business with. This plum wine almost had gotten onto his nerves if it hadn't come from Gognzi. Emer paid him no mind, shaking her page to clear any remaining grains of sand that clung to it.

"I believe in him even if he does not of himself." She then proceeded to fold her parchment until it was a folded into a small and padded diamond shape.

Emer held it up, eyeing the pacing man.

Duscan stopped. Stared at the offered object. Rejecting it would only mean she would make another visit to him, and he wanted to keep his past separate from Bozzy should trouble come looking for him.

"Veya favours the rich. Merchant or noble or swindlers, those that have enough money to lord over their own home and make purchases that could make starving villages cry would find a home there. Indentures have been tradition for centuries now. The fey were their inspiration, for contracts and promises always had a high cost." Duscan didn't look to Gongzi. His eyes stayed on Emer's as she held his there, the letter held between them. He approached, reaching out a hand and took it. No need to snatch it from her, or swat it away.

It was a favour, one he needed to guard closely.

"Collecting weavers had begun as a way of security. Fending off the rats that made holes in their walls and found their way into their homes. If you're going to have wealth flaunted about, then you need to prepare for those of us that want a fair share." Duscan pocketed the note. He looked down at the still seated Gongzi. "After they asserted themselves, they rewarded the Weavers. Riches and luxury, guests of their House and well compensated. Soon enough, other Weavers began to sell themselves and their weaving for a morsel of that life. It became competition. Which House could afford a collection?"

"We were made to be living art." Emer supplied, her voice tight and quiet. A flash there in her eyes, the only hint she had not truly enjoyed her life indentured. "Duscan can see the past in certain places whenever he wishes. As for me? The shroud is my domain. I am a vessel. I deal in secrets." Even that itself was a vague description, but Duscan had asked the question enough times to figure out the answer.
 
And while the exchange with Duscan was certainly making the latter make some choices almost out loud (so clear was the noisy screech of turning wheels inside the poor man's head), Song could barely restrain the manner of his smile.
The manner of Emer's business was so, so familiar. Outspoken, but knowledgeable. He knew it well, for he preferred this act, himself - it gathered allies, rumours and curiosities like no show of power could.

But it was Duscan who spoke. At the mention of wealth, a fan found its way into the magpie sorcerer's hand and opened with an accentuated flourish, the lax smile on his lips as he listened, quietly otherwise, one leg swinging over the other.
"The Shroud is the domain for everyone who's apt to use it." Song answered lightly, and finished his wine. "A shame for what you made of enlightened ones in the west, my sympathies - though one does not choose their homeland, we the dutiful sons do long it were made better." No talk of duty. Pointedly, almost.

And then, he clapped his hands, the momentary cloud over his features dissipating entirely.
"I love a secret! Absolutely adore it! If it is, of course, above the beltline, and excites imagination." A touch of fan to the cheek, a wink. "But if someone wants my wealth, this or the other, they best be courteous and diligent - why invite bad karma when good one could be earned much easier?" A laugh. "My business is concluded, so long as young Duscan wants no more plum wine. A pleasure, Emer-jie."
 
Emer presented Song with a pleasant smile. "When you arrive later for your room, let the guards know you are invited. I will have a word with them to show you to an attendant that will see to it that your stay is pleasant and give you a key."

To Duscan, she leaned back into her leather chair, smirking. "Your order will arrive before sun down. As always, I look forward to your next visit."

Emer reached towards her desk, fingers curling around the handle to a small bell. With three shakes, the twinkling sound echoed through the office, and a few moments later, the door opened. The same woman from before, that had been tending to Emer before Duscan interrupted. "Now, I have some business to take care of before our hours become busier tonight. Run along, Dusky. Not Gongzi, a pleasure to have made your acquaintance." But she was already out of her seat, having pushed it back before turning her back on them. Emer sat atop her desk, arranging herself.

Duscan averted his gaze the moment those skirts parted over flawless thighs. Clearing his throat, he waved Gongzi to follow.

Closing the doors, he lingered a moment and stared at the other. His eyes narrowed. "Hang on... she said Not Gongzi. Why? That's your name or not?" The suspicion was building. Names could be tricky, that Duscan knew and encouraged back in Veya, but here? Now? Emer had brought attention to it for a reason.

"Mate, what does gongzi mean?"
 
The sorcerer's fresh and beaming face shifted slightly, and he regarded Emer's farewell with what could only be read as a slight disappointment. Was she trying to argue the nobility of his birth? Or, in an akward manner, was doing one of those childishly defiant things of arguing that if he was not specifically her lord, he wasn't to be addressed as one? Either way, amusing. And telling, in not letting a harmless joke run its course - and show the magpie lord more things with that whim than she knew.

What could he say? Everyone loved a secret keeper, but if casual affairs rolled down the tongue as easily as fluids ventured down the legs - the people would be bound to keep dearer secrets closer. He now knew at least one of them was a seer, and that meant he would not venture forth within either's view without a mirror pendant on the belt. To dissuade prying.
"How fortunate am I it's not for you to decide. I'll take my leave."
And, with a soft smile, he stood, a flourish of green hues, black silken wave of hair tossed over the shoulder, calligraphed fan opening fully with a click like some would brandish a weapon.

He let Duscan close the doors behind them, and ventured forward to the exit without looking back. The lad leapt very quickly from his cronie's strange wording to a correct conclusion.
"No faintest clue why she would deny me what is mine, young Duscan - that is what others call me," Song responded, the fan undulating serenely, as a resting butterfly's wing. "Are we mates, now?" A chuckle, that same oddly jaded twinkle in his eye, "I thought we'd not known one another for more than half a day. But, as we are marring this day with a touch of seriousness after all - I would be bothered by someone, even a dear friend, sharing my life's struggles with another so easily. Aren't you?"
 
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Duscan waved him off. "Don't get it confused. Mate doesn't make you a friend, where I come from."

But he eyed the other man, who moved with poise and spoke with an eloquence that would have made Dusc curl his hand into a fist if he were back home in Veya.

"Emer knows things, so many things, but doesn't speak about any of it unless it holds impact. Her making that detail must mean something." Duscan continued to peer at Gongzi, suspicion in those blue eyes of his. "Is that the name you were born with? Gongzi?"

But the Bastard's face fell into a frown. He realised that Emer knew several languages, and had proudly stated that multiple times. Perhaps it wasn't her weaving that she used when she spoke of Gongzi, but understanding what that word meant. Duscan came to a stop, scowling at Gongzi's back. "And what does it mean? Pretty face? Or does it mean something like I like fans?" Veya had no unique dialect, speaking Common in order to keep up with the many that made to put down roots there that came from all over.

It was an infestation.
 
"She certainly revealed a fair bit about you. If it was not a bid for cooperation, undermined right then and there by creating your current concern - then was it a mishandling?" A light shrug, an excited giggle, fan's shade falling over his lips - I wonder.
He turned over his shoulder, five steps out the door of the brothel. The light eyes narrowed, laughing.

"Oh, we aren't friends, then?" The fan moved slowly with the flair of the wrist, sending a cooler breeze against the easterner's face. "I suppose paying for you didn't do much. And yet, I do so like games. That you are still thinking I seek to harm you... saddens me, young Duscan."
He stood still, eyeing the combative barman up and down. A gentle sigh, a tilting head, as if hoping that the tension was any less from a different angle.

"Well, if I tell you, will you be my friend?" One could swear the youthful vision was almost pouting. "I make bridges and bring fortunes, you know."
 
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Duscan tensed.

Had to take a few moments before speaking lowly, to answer the man. "It never used to be this hard to make a friend out of me..." The Bastard began. A hand ran down his face, pulling at his features and revealing the world weary state he kept hidden. "But after the shit I went through, and the distrust I built..."

Money. Riches. People getting what they wanted with little effort. There were too many reminders in the South of what he endured in Veya. Money and coin were rife in these parts, drawing mercenaries to Crorefell as shroudweavers looked to the City of the Rich.

"Not yet. I cannot make a friend out of you just... yet."

It sounded fucking sad, that he couldn't even be nonchalant about it.
 
"Well, Emer-jie wasn't wrong about me." Song mused.
Not a single miniscule twitch of feature followed as the bastard was, in the next step after denouncing friendship, spill onto him about the hardships to explain. Oh, woe, Song thought, was it that he did have a pretty face that made even this man feel bad for mistreating him? Quite likely, and he wouldn't blame Duscan if so.

"Well then!" The lordling's smile shone innocent. "Such a shame. Then, the game will continue until you wisen or find an answer, young Duscan. Delight yourself in the learning! I will be having a drink at your place once the wine arrives."

The fan that closed opened once again, offering unhurried gusts against the growing heat.
"Now, you should hurry along, back to your sanctuary, and hide from the world until your bravery finds you."
 
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