Emma pt. 6

Want to start at the beginning? - Emma, Part 1

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The pages of the book were brittle, stiff and brown from age.  She turned them carefully, holding the cover of the book in one hand so as not to stretch the binding open too far. 

Each morning after breakfast she was to dedicate her time to reading and study. When she was younger her mother hired tutors to guide her studies, but now she was able to pick what material she desired. She often used the time to daydream about travel and about cities beyond the valley that held the small dwin homeland.

The first thing she’d done after her breakfast of spiced bread and boiled eggs was to pull down all the books in her mother’s library about Patrons and the laws that governed the Merchants Assembly. She had glanced through them when Rilen had first told her about Deem's plan, but now she wanted to study in detail. 

She was most concerned with the obligations of being a Patron, of what the Assembly would expect from her and how she could fulfill her duties.  Getting the chance to see Blue Coast and travel with Rilen would be spectacular, but if it came at the cost of being constrained by bureaucracy just as she was by her family, she wasn’t sure it would be worth it.

From what she read, Patrons and their duties varied widely.  Some were extremely active in their investments, often working side by side with those they sponsored, while others sat comfortably in their estates, interacting with their workers as little as possible.

Some dwin had been reprimanded by the Assembly over their indifference. Patrons were charged with insuring the contracts forged at the Assembly were honored. To disregard that duty was a crime, and distinguished Lords had found their hands sentenced to hard labor when they failed to serve the Assembly.

There were no restrictions on who could be a Patron, as long as they were from a family with a seat in the nobles’ court.  The youngest patron in dwin history had only been twenty. He had sponsored an enterprise to import lime trees and sell the fruit to the coastal cities. The Merchant Assembly laughed at the time, many saying it was a mistake to allow someone so young to serve, but the business he helped found and the orchards his money helped plant were prosperous to this day.

The heavy tome Emma held was the guiding laws of Paldurain and its Merchant Assembly, laid down before the Divide, when dwarves and dwin lived together in the city. She closed it and set it down on the stone table.

Next to it a larger book sat, open to a painted illustration of the bay at Blue Coast. The line between ocean and land was impossible to see. The blue waves rolled toward the land, and the blue sand was dotted with silver ink to mimic gleaming sunlight. The island city sat between two branches of Tunki’s Daughter, which poured into the bay, depositing the ceruleanite that gave the beach its color.

Levees lined the island, sloping white walls that channeled the river away from the city, protecting its clustered buildings. It looked like a massive ship, adrift in a blue sea.

“Be careful, mother would never forgive you if you hurt her favorite book.”

Emma lifted the page with the illustration and squinted in confusion at her brother who was crossing the room to join her, “I don’t think she’s ever even looked at this.”

“No,” he laughed reaching out and tapping the cracking cover of the legal text, “that. She always brags about owning one of the only pre-Divide copies in the city.”

Nelum was older than Emma, but shorter, taking more after their mother. His orange eyes were softer than his sister’s, and his long arms made him seem more dwarfish than the common dwin. But he had the same oval face she did, the same wavy brown hair, and he shared her passion for adventure, though not her disregard for dwarven custom.

Emma scoffed, “Like it matters when it was written, the laws are just the same.”

He stood across the table from her, his arms crossed, “Sure, but dwarves held this book, maybe even bound it.”

Emma shrugged, “Dwarves built this table to, doesn’t make it any less ugly.”

Nelum laughed and sat next to his sister, putting his arm around her. She sat rather stiffly, a more irritated than she had been a moment before. Thinking about the stone table in front of them reminded her of her childhood in their mountain home.

The white stone of the table rose up from the ground at many points - carved lines, twisting into ornate patterns.  Geometric shapes encircled each other.  One large hole was in the middle of the carvings on each side of the table and squares, octagons, and multi-sided stars spun around the circles. The stone grew thick toward the top where it gradually joined into one block, bending into a sturdy, smooth surface. 

When she was a child her older brothers, Nelum included, used to force Emma under the table, in through the large circles, and tell her she was in prison. They would drops tools in with her and tell her she had to work to make up for her crimes. 

When she was very young she lashed out at them. She would scream and yell, trying to climb back out, and when they pushed her in again she would bang at the stone work until their mother yelled at them, worried they would break it.

Eventually she learned the thing to do was sit, her arms crossed, not looking at them, not reacting.  Soon after that they tired of the game.

The memory of being trapped in the cold, dark interior of the table flashed so vividly in her mind that she wanted to slap her brother’s hand away and run out of the house, but Nelum was talking about the picture of Blue Coast, and his words distracted her from her anger.

“There is a dwin neighborhood in Blue Coast, Dalana has a cousin who lives there. It’s a bunch of dwin that wanted to live outside our valley, some of them were even born in the city.”

“Do you think it’s any different there? Do you think their lives are anything like ours.”

He shrugged, “I don’t know. I bet it’s not all that different.”

“They don’t worship dwarves in Blue Coast.” She pointed out.

“No, they worship ceruleanite,” she lifted her eyebrow at him quizzically, “or near enough. Without Tunki’s Daughter and the ceruleanite it deposits, they would just be another port city, one stop along the coast. With it they are one of the most important cities in the world.”

Emma didn’t agree with that, but said nothing. Ceruleanite was common down the long leagues of the river, Blue Coast was far from the world’s only source of the valuable stones, and most of the ones that washed up on its beaches lacked any magical properties and were only good for decoration.

They sat, not speaking. Emma continued to stare at the picture and Nelum fidgeted, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

“Anyway, you should come outside with me,” he finally said, “Tilda and Moor are doing their readings outside. We should go distract them.”

Emma’s sister and youngest brother were still required follow their tutor’s prescribed readings. Emma recalled the times she’d been allowed to study in the sunlight, the warmth of it on her skin making the trudge through the dull texts bearable. She also remembered Nelum distracting her, making her mother yell at them for not studying and sending them back in the house.

“No thanks, I need to read some more.” She reached for a recent text, detailing the current members of the Merchant’s Assembly.

“Don’t tell me you plan on ending up like Eibe, boring and stiff at the Assembly?"

“Nelum,” she looked straight into his eyes, “what I’m planning is really none of your business.”

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Continue to Part 7