Letters from the Last Heir - Paresper Silveress

[Blissey]

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Letters from the Last Heir​

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6th of Kythorn 1370 DR

Dear Cormyr​

I am currently aboard a mercantile vessel headed for the Westgate, across the Dragonmere. The captain was easy enough to appease. When I'd told him I was the son of Pryntaler Silveress, he had said he owed the Baron a favor and would happily take me where I needed to go. I acted with confidence, with the station given to me, but today I leave you for the first time, Cormyr. I have no watchful eyes looking over me. I have no net to catch me should I fall. The moment I cross Dragonmere, the name of Silveress only counts as much as the gold I'd lifted from my father's coffer when I snuck away. Fear is not the most immediate word that I want to write. Nor is sorrow, nor grief. Anger, mayhaps? I could write of anger. My hand has tremors now, and I've only the single piece of vellum the Captain was willing to give me. Apologies, Cormyr - this shan't be the neatest of letters I will send you. The Brothers of the Broken God I'd passed by on my way to Suzail's docks told me that it was no mere fleshwound. They said it had 'created dark humours of black bile within my arm,' which explains the measure of mobility I'd lost in it. They gave me what aid they could render, stitched the wound, and cleaned it. I offered them a coin, but they refused. Something, something, “we are doing our The Broken God's work.” I stopped listening and carried on. I had bled through my finest white tunic, and felt pale for much of the day. When I peel the bandages off, a long, hellish scar runs along the underside of my bicep. The Brothers of the Broken God are fine stitchers, I must admit. "It will scar,” they told me, but I think I am okay with that. I'd spent much of the time while they mended me pondering stories I could tell of how I had gotten this scar. They all sounded far too fanciful for a man who could barely lift his sword now. I was no errant knight yet, of course. Anything but the truth would do, however. Of all the regrets I have in leaving, it would be not finishing my squireship with Ser Ancel. He was kind and quiet. He said far more with his eyes than ever with his own words. I do not want to think of his eyes when he learns I had left the way I did.

The captain knocked and broke bread with me. He asked many questions, but he quickly gathered that I was not in an answering mood. I have no doubt he knows something is amiss, and whatever gold I could offer him pales next to what my father has. He will find out eventually, then I will have to find a way to swim across the Dragonmere. That would be a sight, wouldn't it Cormyr? A squire at the bottom of the Dragonmere, donned in all his shite armour, sinking like a stone. Once the captain had left, night had fallen, I crept out onto the deck. The saltspray was relieving, the stars were alight all across the sky, and I could see you, Cormyr, fading into the distance like a little pinprick. I offered my wedding ring to one of the deckhands that was rigging the sails. He seemed incredibly puzzled at first, and seemed to think that I wished something in return. But I insisted, the second time that I did he had no hesitation in taking it. It was a golden band with a small ruby. I saw he had a band on his ring finger too, but then again, there were several and now my own. I believe whatever kind intentions I had, thinking this man had a family, and that the ring would buy his family food for the next year quickly soured. Some queer thought passed me by just now, and I wondered what if Rosalina sees that very same deckhand wandering about the docks with our wedding band on? Strangely, I find myself laughing at the thought. I do not know if it is out of guilt, or some strange morbidity. I think I will leave that thought to hang dry for now. The chambers the captain has afforded me were clearly made for the stray gentility that seem to often wrangle themselves aboard. When I entered, it was perfumed. I even found a large plumed azure bouffant in the chamber's closet. Much to my chagrin, this was some strange joke the deckhands had played on me. I was asked, 'does it fit?' as I'd walked across the deck the first morning of our journey. Imbeciles, all of them. Of course it would fit. Helm has seen to bless his greatest defender with the frame of a boy ailing with consumption. By the third night, one of the deckhands had loosened one of the bolts in the closet's door and it would swing open all night. The bouffant would stare at me as we crested every second wave. I sleep facing the wall of my cabin now.

It won't be long now, Cormyr, till I am in the Westgate. There, I will find a caravan to ride along with into deeper parts of the Sword Coast. I hope out there, past your rolling green hills and beautiful forests, past the Dragonmere, the Giant's Run Mountains and the Giant's Plain, there's something more.

Your Friend​

The Last Heir of Silveress​

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[Blissey]

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Letters from the Last Heir​

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25th Kythorn 1370 DR

Dear Rosalina​

A marriage of necessity is an insult to the rose-tinted ideals of a courtly love. Not that it mattered much to you, in the end. To you, I would like to think I am a man with the graces of a swan, with a comely face and the demeanor of a virtuous knight. Then again, the house of Lilytemper is renowned only for the churning of their fabled butter; did I think you’d be capable of seeing me as anything more than you’d wanted me to be? Unlikely. Your father was bequeathed lands and titles by a generous, yet senile sole survivor of house Gantire. A controversial choice, of course, to give his lands to the very herders that worked his lands. You are, by all means, peasantry with a golden ribbon to hold your butter-smelling hair up in a bun. Mayhaps I write this in some stray hope that you’ll deem my earnestness endearing. I do doubt you would ever read it, hence why my honesty bleeds into the pages like melted butter. I cannot however seem to be rid of the scent, strangely. I would say it reminds me of you, but dear Rosalina, if the scents of your maidenliness are akin to butter and not a flower, nor a light perfume or even the smells of mildew or petrichor, then the only suitor you would ever attract is one that requires a litter to move from one room to another.

For all the butter you would have wrought into my life, Rosalina, you certainly would have brought some sense of a rustic charm. Your family settled into your new estate like cuckoo-finches. On my first visit to meet the fair and earthly people of the Lilytemper family, it smelt of manure. Lo’ and behold, you had a cow that trotted through the halls. Like the vaunted herder you are, you ushered this spotted black and white beast back to the fields whence it came. This had been the ninth suitor that my father had presented me to, and at this point, I had grown so desperately versed in the manners of courting that you were a refreshment long overdue. You were not intrigued by poetry, nor by sensible flirtations. I invited you to spar with me, on the small chance you enjoyed the art of swordsmanship, yet instead you clubbed me over the head with the flat of the practice sword. You did not even remain to watch me spar with the other squires, who, I must admit, fight very valiantly without using the flats of their damnable practice swords. I won three of five spars that day, if you care to know! You enjoyed the mud. You enjoyed the dirt beneath your nails. You reveled in shoveling manure into neat, orderly piles. After a hard day’s toil, you drank warm ale and smoked tobacco with your dirty soles up on the tabletop.

The idea of our marriage was, at that point, so detestable that I cannot deny thinking I should fling myself from the highest point of the Silveress estate. By the time our courtship came to an end, and the marriage all but assured, I was so deep in my melancholy, with nearly a pint of wine always at my side, and my name well known in three male-oriented strumpet houses across Suzail. When the night of our wedding came, you wore a dress I was sure Suzene Hightallow had worn at a ball several nights prior. Past the point of our vows, I had nearly finished three flagons of wine. I was quite honestly astounded I’d even managed to recite the words let alone dance with you after. Though, I do recall a sadness in your eyes. A longing look to a retainer that lingered just at the dancehall’s edge. If there was once an arrangement to be made, where you sought the lovers you wished and as would I, then perhaps we’d have had little issue between us. By the point we’d been ushered into our chambers to consummate the marriage, Ser Ancel had given me now six flagons of wine. It was at this point my memory became a haze. When I had awoken, I was still dressed in my fine black and white tunic. I could taste only bitter acid in my mouth, the burning sensation of wine retched forth. I pray I did not retch on Suzane Hightallow’s dress. My pockets, however, were all but empty. You had lifted the coin I intended to use to visit the strumpet house again. If and when I return, I intend to come and collect the sixty-three silver that rightfully belongs to me.

Your Beloved Husband​

The Last Heir of Silveress​

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