Tales of MU

Deciding on a concrete course of action always made Dan Harris feel better about things for a little while.

Specifically, it made him feel better until the time came to implement that course of action.

More specifically, it made him feel better until he realized that he had no idea how to actually implement that course of action.

His problem, he reflected, was that he let his mouth do all the thinking. Mouths aren’t very big on long-term planning, or even near-time planning. They’re all about movement: food in, words out, and his mouth had never been particularly bothered about the food.

He had certainly employed more than a dash of empty bravado in his attempts to reassure his wife. That wasn’t to say that he’d been wrong about it… it was more to say that he didn’t know if he’d been right. He’d picked up on a few things about how the lower ranks of the upper classes did things during his time with Dell’s family, but he’d grown up as a commoner.

Not just that, but he’d grown up on a series of airships. This upbringing had imparted in him a certain savviness, a quickness of thinking and a customary care for how and where he stepped. It had done little to prepare him to move in the circles that Sir Aidan Harris the First might be expected to negotiate.

He didn’t know if dropping a few titles and a bag of gold onto a desk would be enough to get Aidan in the door, much less prompt the kind of pomp he wanted to provoke before… and if he handled it wrong the first time, there might not be a chance to get it right.

Growing up on an airship had taught him quite a bit on the subject of things you only had one shot at.

Luckily, Dell’s concerns had been sufficiently assuaged for the matter to stand tabled through the rest of the weekend. The second thing he did when he got to work on Monday was commandeer an empty office so he could have a little private face-time with someone else’s reflection. The first thing he did was turn Martindale out of his office, so he could have an empty office to commandeer.

“Well, it’s like this, Bob,” he said to the image of his father-in-law. “We need to make your grandson feel sort of, well, special…”

“Oh? And here I thought the idea was to help the lad feel normal,” Lord Robert Corvir replied.

There were reasons that Robert got on well with his son-in-law. Most of them didn’t actually have anything to do with the way that Dan’s landing in his family’s life had improved their fortunes and standing.

“In the great generality of things, yes,” Dan said. “But in this specificity, we want him to know that he’s wanted. Really, truly wanted. You can understand why that might be, surely?”

“Ah, yes, of course I do,” Robert replied, nodding sagely. He was wrong, of course, but he couldn’t know that, and Dan was content to let him think that this was about Aidan’s status as an adopted child.

“We would like to give him an education outside of the village, you see,” Dan said. “Dell doesn’t think they’ll treat our boy right here, and I don’t half blame her for feeling that way. We want to give him a chance to get outside this small-town mindset and stretch his wings… metaphorically.”

“Yes, but at his age, it could be a delicate proposition. He could well be nervous if he thinks he’s being sent away,” Robert said. “But if he can see that schools are fighting over him, trying to outdo each other and prove their worth to him…”

“That is more or less exactly the plan,” Dan said. “But the schools we want to get into… well, they wouldn’t look twice at the son of an accountant and a mana-monkey, unless the second time was to make sure their eyes weren’t playing a cruel trick on them.”

“Dan, I know you know there’s more to both of you than that, so I won’t waste time giving you unneeded assurances,” Robert said. “But I fear you’re right about the impression you’re likely to make, and the reception you’d get. Still, you do have some social capital you could engage. You don’t have to apply as Mr. and Mrs. Mana-Monkey.”

“Now we’re leafing our way towards the same page,” Dan said. “The problem is, I don’t know how to use this social capital. Dell’s barely got me trained on the use of capital letters. If I know anything about the upper crust, it’s that they can spot an upstart with a recently acquired title a mile away, and they have no use for parvenus and danny-come-latelies from amongst the hoi polloi.”

“Well, you can’t be worse at playing the part of a distinguished gentleman than you are at playing the unlettered tradesman,” Robert said, his eyes twinkling. “But you know, even the landed aristocracy don’t try to navigate the currents of high society alone. Like everything, they have people for that.”

“And can people like me get people like that?”

“Dan, in the modern age, people with money can get anything… that’s why the upper crust is so crusty these days,” he said. “There are plenty of people skilled in the courtly arts who have realized they can make more money for less work by selling their services to the teeming masses than the hoarding few. The masses have less money, but there are so many more of them.”

“That’s one of the better qualities of masses, in my opinion,” Dan said. “So, what do I need? A butler? A valet? A batman? An aide-de-camp? A gentleman’s gentlem…?”

“Dan, I know you don’t like feeling out of your depths, but you don’t need to prove your vocabulary to me,” Robert said. “I know you’ve as fine a mind as any, and better than most. And as it happens, no. If you were intending to join polite society full-time, then yes, you would need such a person. For this, you just need someone who can help you make the right impression. For this, you need a herald.”

“There are… freelance heralds?”

“Dan, I told you: in this day and age, there are freelance everything. In the bigger isles, even the tax collectors can hire out for their duties, if they’re rich enough.”

“I know about freelance tax collectors,” Dan said. “They’re called brigands.”

“Listen, I know an old fellow who quit the aristocratic service and settled in your neck of the empire,” Robert said. “Well, no further away than the clavicle. You would have to pay his travel expenses and put him up, but if you’re looking to get Aidan into a good school then this will probably be one of the smaller expenses you incur along the way.”

“Money is a very small and distant object, your Bobship,” Dan said.

“His name is Willoughby.”

“That his first name or last name?”

“It’s the last name he’ll ever give anyone,” Robert said. “He’s fairly choosy about his clientele, but you won’t go wrong by remembering me to him at the outset. Let me give you his address… he responds to written correspondence only.”

“Tell me again all about this modern age of ours?”

“If he didn’t have one foot in the past, he wouldn’t be useful to you,” Robert said.

“Point taken.”

---

Dan sent his inquiry via portal post, following Lord Robert’s recommendations as to such particulars as the weight of the parchment and the thickness of the envelope and the existence of a wax seal, which after some thought he had ended up pressing using a key fob that bore the insignia of the Lefton Imperial Airworks. Even with instantaneous confirmed delivery, it was three days before he received a reply.

The letter was brief and to the point. It was a list of the finer details of what would constitute acceptable accommodations and the time and date for them to be ready by.

There was a boarding house on the edge of Lefton with a suite of rooms that met Willoughby’s standards, and Dan secured them for him. There had been no mention of sending a reply and the letter had seemed so definite that Dan figured it would be redundant. He had been accepted by Willoughby and that was it… to acknowledge that he accepted the old herald’s terms would probably insult him, by suggesting that there was ever any possibility they could be negotiable.

At the appointed hour, he met Willoughby at the air coach stop. The herald was old and silver-haired and faintly elven. He called Dan “sire” in a way that made it clear this was a general form of address he used for clients, not a personal statement of any kind.

“Would you like me to leave you alone to settle in?” Dan asked Willoughby once he’d nodded once in satisfaction at the rooms.

“No, sire, if you have no more pressing business, I’d like to get on with it,” Willoughby said. “My services are very much in demand. I’m only here as a favor to Lord Robert. Now, you’ve explained what you need, but there are some details that you left out of your inquiry. Important details.”

“I’m not prepared to discuss my reasons,” Dan said. “This is work for hire, you don’t need to know them.”

“Well, of course I don’t, sire,” Willoughby said. He had a trick of verbally rolling his eyes while his expression remained fixedly reverential. Dan would have held him upside down over an active volcano if he thought he could shake the secret of it out of him that way. “You told me your title and honors, but you did not say if you have a coat of arms. Your son, of course, can use the Corvir family one, but employing it would require the awkward circumlocution of penning the letter in his name.”

“My wife is Bob Corvir’s daughter,” Dan said. “Why couldn’t she use it?”

“Sire, you answered the question before you asked it,” Willoughby said. “And you’ve answered mine as well. Not to fret, however.”

“No?”

“Indeed not, sire. A good letterhead can be as important as a coat of arms, these days,” the elderly gentleman informed him, in a tone that suggested that while it could be, it usually wasn’t. “A gentleman and hero of the empire is entitled to a coat of arms, of course, and there would be much to draw from, even without Lord Robert’s shield. You have quite a colorful history…”

“We, er, would rather keep things simple,” Dan said. “The best deceptions usually are.”

“It wouldn’t be a deception, though,” the herald said. “You’re fully entitled.”

“Yes, but I don’t intend to go through life using my full entitle, don’t you see?” Dan said.

“Of course,” the herald said, in a tone that suggested the opposite. “Well, if you want simple, perhaps it’s for the best. The new thing… the current thing… is to be very understated. These things follow a cycle, you see. People begin adding more titles and devices to their stationery, and then it reaches a point where a third of the page is taken up with scrollwork and minutiae, and then someone… someone whose position is lofty enough that he can afford to not remind others of exactly who he is… will roll it all back, as it were, to a simple heading written in a bold, clean script with only a little flourish. If you’d tried to enroll your son in a school five years ago or five years hence, it would be a bad time to employ stark simplicity, but plainness in stationery is very respectable right now.”

“Well, if nothing else, that means the lad has a keen sense of timing,” Dan said. “We’ll be sure to mention that on his applications.”

“Now, the thing that’s going to be tricky is that it would be gauche to mention your own specific accomplishments in a letter of inquiry,” the herald said. “That’s not to say that no one would do such a thing, but… it isn’t done. And your achievements will count for more if you don’t put them forward yourself. ‘Hero of the Empire’ falls into an unfortunate limbo of being a title without a style. Signing your letters ‘Sir Aidan Harris, Hero of the Empire’ would seem a tad… ostentatious.”

“Well, I hired you on because I need to get it across somehow,” Dan said. “I’ve been in the news before but I’m not exactly a household name, you know.”

“I do know, indeed. You are quite far from being one, in certain households,” he said. “If your goal were to receive an introduction to higher society, it would be difficult to achieve, except perhaps as a curiosity piece at a certain kind of garden party. The sorts of people one will find operating even the finer schools in this region, though, will be quite a different matter… and they will be excited at the thought of improving their stock. Remember, it is always easier to impress the upwardly mobile than the, ah…”

” Upwardly stable?” Dan supplied.

“Indeed, sire,” Willoughby said. “And may I say you have quite the wit?”

“You may, but I have a feeling that you shan’t.”

“Now, while it would be appalling of us to remind people of your great deeds too directly, we can do little things to gently jog the memory and subtly stir the curiosity. You were a member of the Merchant Air Marines at the time of the disaster, I think? We can use their device. And the Imperial Air Service’s.”

“I was a lad when I was on those boats,” Dan said. “I was never properly enlisted.”

“Yes, sire, but you see, the rules for the use of naval insignia date back to a time when it more likely would have been impressment than enlistment, and they don’t account for age,” Willoughby said. “You served on an Imperial Airship. Whether or not you were properly a member of the navy is beyond the scope of the question.”

“I was on a Magisterian ship as a babe, can we put their logo on, too?”

“Certainly not, sire,” Willoughby said. “And then, of course, we’ll close with the death’s head and laurel wreath.”

“…the what?”

“It is what you might call a bit of… unofficial heraldry,” Willoughby said. “It is on the books, as it were, though it’s never been officially validated. It is a sign of imperial favor. Anyone who has ever been in the presence may choose to signify it with the death’s head. Anyone who has been offered a boon may add a laurel wreath.”

“…and the master of a school is going to know this?”

“I doubt it, though they will certainly be moved to look it up. Did you know that no living person has been granted more boons by the Unnameable Emperor than you have?”

“Well, three’s the significant number, isn’t it? I’m not the only three-fer.”

“Indeed, no,” Willoughby said. “But it is very rare for a person to be offered multiple boons. It’s impressive.”

“Look, he stared into my eyes for half an hour before he said ‘boo’ to me, to say nothing of sticking an ‘n-s’ on the end of it,” Dan said. “I think the fact that he offered three instead of one is because he had a good sense of what I would do with them. It’s not that I merited them more than the bloke who walked away with one. It’s that he understood that I understood not to ask for anything that would make him regret offering, so he got to appear all magnanimous to the hero of the minute.”

“Your understanding of the imperial mind is awe-inspiring,” Willoughby said. “But none of this will occur to anyone who is delving into your history. They are far more likely to think… ahem… ‘wow, three boons from the emperor!'”

“You have a fair point there, but I thought the idea to keep things clean and simple?”

“It is. Three small devices are quite sufficient, sire,” Willoughby said. “We could, of course, put more, but my thought is that having two fairly common and mundane associations and then the sign of imperial honor will pique the curiosity. If the wreathed skull were merely one of a dozen or so, it might be assumed to be for something frivolous. A simpler arrangement that starkly contrasts it implies a story: you were an airshipman, you had a career on both imperial and civilian ships… so far, so common. But then something quite dramatic happens, you are honored by the emperor, and then you clearly retire to this region and work as a humble inspector.”

“You’ve clearly never heard me inspecting,” Dan said.

“How perfectly drôle,” Willoughby said, employing a word that Dan knew the Merovians used to mean humorous and Metropolitans used for the opposite effect. “The point is that the unspecified event that merited the honor is a question hanging in the air. Your deeds are known, even if they are not well-known. It would be the work of minutes for anyone to learn who you are.”

“Sensible enough,” Dan said, though something bothered him about it… possibly the sensibleness of it. “But we’re going to need to have references, too… given that one is naturally going to be from my father-in-law, wouldn’t that be a more sure-cast way of making sure the story reaches its audience?”

“The things one reads in a letter of reference are both less interesting and less credible than the things one discovers for oneself,” Willoughby said.

“You do have a point about that,” Dan said, nodding thoughtfully.

He was starting to feel like he had a better handle on things. He’d described the whole plan to Dell as though they could treat it as an elaborate con and bluff their way through it. Now he was starting to realize that he’d essentially been right.

“The initial inquiries should be very general, sire,” Willoughby said. “You have a son who is of a certain age, and you hold their institution in some regard and would not look unfavorably if they would be so kind as to forward some information, if they think there may be an opening.”

“Right,” Dan said. “Should I write them and then show them to you, or would you rather I write them here where you can see?”

“I shall write them for your signature, sire,” Willoughby said. “Did Lord Robert not mention that I am a scribe, as well? The fact that your letters are written by a scribe… and not merely ‘scribed’ in the modern parlance… will count for much. Things may move at a speed we cannot control once the wheels begin to roll, though, so we should see to the other preparations first.”

“Other preparations?”

“We shall need to get clothes,” Willoughby said. “There is a teahouse in town. We shall go to it. You will drink tea while I take notes, and then you will take notes while I instruct you.”

“I’ve drunk tea before,” Dan said. “The hot, liquid part goes in the mouth. The hard crunchy part goes back onto the saucer. It’s not difficult, honestly. A Metro could manage it.”

“I’m speaking of matters of poise and comportment while doing so,” Willoughby said. “Once the letters have served their purpose, you can be sure that any time you visit the premises, you will be escorted to a quiet room and offered refreshment. It might be in an office where you will be engaged with chit-chat. It might be in a comfortable salon where you wait, ostensibly alone. Either way, you can be certain you will be observed. After all, anyone can engage the services of a scribe, in this day and age.”

“Scandalous, isn’t it?” Dan said. “Just to be clear: we’re getting my son into school, not passing me off as a duchess, yes?”

“Sire… you said to me that you see no need to go into your reasons, nor would I much care to hear them,” Willoughby said. “But reading between the lines of your query letter, I think there is more at play here than a desire to see your son enrolled. You could buy your way into any school on this island. You, for whatever reason, want to be courted. You want it to mean something if someone behind a somewhat respectable desk thinks they’ve seen the back of you. You want them to chase after you, as it were, in the fashion that is seemly for them to do so. Yes?”

“You’re a good man, Willoughby,” Dan said.

“Then let’s get to it.”

---

Tales of MU is now on Patreon! Help keep the story going!

Or if you particularly enjoyed this chapter, leave a tip!

---

Characters: Dan Harris, Willoughby