B.T.V. -- Session 15 Epilogue: A Date with Lyra, a Date with a Locacobra

Selador rose from his night of sleep, still bothered by his wounds from earlier battles but ignoring them as he carefully prepared himself for his coming date with the Dzur Stig Sergeant Lyra. After ensuring his uniform was, as always perfect but perhaps especially perfect in this incidence, he opened his Entombed Treasure Room to retrieve a necklace of moonstones, which he slipped into a pocket. He replaced Massartu, his Great Blade, with a more ordinary version that he had had made for daily use, and then emerged from his treasure room only to find the Jhereg Feddix lounging in a chair.

“Might one help you?” Selador inquires stiffly.

“It’d just thought I’d hang out, given it’s your big day,” the Jhereg answered. He had, after all, been hired by Selador to assist in the courtship by providing advice. bFeddix pointed out he and Lyra were more alike than Selador and the woman he sought to woo. “Despite our differences, we’re both Draegerans.”

“In the racial sense,” Selador conceded, but no more.

“Yes, given the laws of Draegeran society, laws which should be upheld,” the Jhereg replied with irony. “I say ‘pfft’ to laws. You’ll need an ally in this before the day is over.”

Selador disagreed, stating some adventures must be undertaken alone. Feddix pointed out the Special Tactics Group “might take offence on her behalf” to an Easterner courting one of their non-commissioned officers.

“One will deal with it as it comes,” Selador answered aloofly.

“Jhereg are very good when it comes to dissipating the attentions of other Draegerans,” Feddix says, adding as he departs, “You better get something to eat to settle your stomach.”

“These Jhereg are very strange,” Selador muttered, if Law Lords ever did mutter.

Downstairs in the tavern, he takes his usual spot at a particular table in the Windows section, and the Teckla barmaid Illa Kaes arrived to take his order.

“I will have my usual tea, honey, bread and strawberry,” the Law Lord ordered, and Illa hurried off to fill his order. Finndo, meanwhile, has strolled up, and he reverses a chair to sit backwards upon it, facing Selador.

“I missed you yesterday, in all the fuss and excitement,” Finndo related. “the Empress makes a progression today, though strictly within the city limits.” The progression, while held from time to time, had be organized and announced in haste, he continued. Many workers had taken the day off to pay their respects to their sovereign.

“The rule of the House of the Phoenix is based upon its eventually decline,” but the Empress was still much loved by her citizens, he noted.

“Everyone knows she is the last,” Selador countered.

“But she has many centuries of life left in her,” Finndo observed.

After Illa serves Selador his breakfast, his cousin turned the conversation to another subject, the Law Lord’s pending appointment with Lyra.

“Now let us speak of the politics of gender. Who will be this chaperone you mentioned? You could do worse than that Tarar bodyguard you have hired.”

Selador protested that the tribesman should be seeing to protect Random, their cousin and former King of Amber, instead, but Finndo through his brother could take care of himself, and was independent-minded. Finally, Finndo suggested Feddix, but Selador demurred.

“I have had my fill of Jhereg for now,” he declared. “Perhaps she’ll bring her own.”

Finndo doubted that, given that Draegerans weren’t even familiar with the word chaperone, let alone the duties of one.

“Where is Asher?” Selador inquired, but Finndo responded the Drifter was involved in training of some sort, and he had other tasks before him as well.

“Perhaps you, cousin?” Selador suggested.

“That’s quite an honour,” Finndo answered with some irony. “Am I your first choice?” Moving on, he recommended Selador consider bringing a small gift of some kind to give to Lyra.

“I already have one,” the Law Lord replied confidently, striking a note of caution with Finndo.

“You don’t want to look too eager or desperate,” he warned. “I was thinking of something more to pass the time, in case of a pause in the conversation, which can turning into a yawning chasm, should nothing fill it.” He urged, too, that Selador adopt a more relaxed posture for the rendezvous, “Perhaps undo one or two buttons of you tunic.” That way, the elder cousin explained, Lyra would be able to see what lay beneath Selador’s outward appearance, and would permit the Law Lord to see the same of her.

“It would be too forward to ask her to remove her clothing,” the literal-minded Selador responded. At Finndo’s quick frown, he added, “If I do not do so, how can I see what lies beneath?”

Finndo’s voluminous moustache twitched furiously for a moment.

“They will not generally react too well to being asked such a forthright request,” Finndo pointed out. “And you can’t tell her all your dreams in the first 12 minutes.”

“I will let the conversation guide us,” Selador answered.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” his cousin observed. “I suggest a meal taken al fresco, outdoors. This has worked for me. The Lost City, I have hopes for it. We could indeed have a picnic there. “I will provide a blanket for you to sit upon, but I’ll only be able to find one pillow, so you might have to share.”

Selador answered, “I would give her the pillow.”

Finndo snorted. “Is this your first rodeo? Damn you Lords of Lawn. It’s past time for you to achieve this.” Struck by a thought, he continued, “It occurs to me your father has not had time to teach you such things.”

“My mother often remarked he had extremely bad hygiene,” Selador responded, adding when he had met Gerard, he had seemed clean enough. Finndo, restraining a comment on how “dirty boy” might mean something else, cautioned about Lyra, “Let us hope you are not too serious for the lady.”




Asher, meanwhile, has picked up his new lacquered hat at a shop at the Nightmarket, and is well-pleased with it.




Finndo and Selador have since strolled to the spot where they first appeared in the city, in a square at the conjunction of two bridges. Finndo departs to make final arrangements for the picnic, and tells Selador to wait upon them. His cousin does so, and notices first a soldier of the Draegeran army, and then Teckla and other Draegerans being to gather in large number, as it appears this place is on the route of the Progression of the Empress. The soldier briefly questions Selador, and seems surprised he is not there for the regal procession.

Selador then hears clapping in the distance, as the Empress presumably moves through Brightstone. He spots the top of an ornate golden carriage as it crosses the bridge into Colleridge, along Derrick Street and its cranes, toward where Selador waits amongst a crowd. He sees Draegerans have climbed the derricks to cheer their Empress as she passed, and detects no animosity that citizens might sometimes hold toward such a figure.

A woman archer strolling along in front of the horseless carriage, which carries in addition to the Empress two footmen on the front and a driver on the back, lofts an arrow into the sky to announce the ruler’s presence, and the crowds cheer wildly. Some bow as well, but Selador does neither. The Empress, he notices, is simply dressed, with golden hair, a gem upon her forehead, who smiles in delight at her reception.

A dark-clad archer, this one male, holding a mighty bow said in an aside to Selador, “You did not bow to the Empress,” but he does not stop to deal with what might be seen as impudent behaviour.

The Empress’s coach crosses a bridge and enters Charterhall, to more cheers.

The nearby soldier remarks to Selador he was fortunate the male archer was too busy watching for assassin’s to make a formal objection to the Law Lord’s behaviour. “You’re having a good day,” the soldier remarks. “What is Law, exactly?”

“Law, is an order to existence,” Selador replies simply.



Finndo returns with a large basket, covered by a folded blanket, and they make their way behind the procession to the bridge over Untoward Bay, between Charterhall and Lost City. Not seeing Lyra, Selador speculates that, due to her rank and duty, the Stig officer might have been called upon to participate in the procession. Finndo, who has been staring out onto the water of the bay, responded, “Hmm? Sorry, I was miles away, thinking of Rosamunda.”

They had no choice but to wait upon Lyra, he continued. They spoke more of women Finndo had known, of family, of Amber and of Gerard, as cousins might.

“He was good company as a brother,” Finndo recalled of the last, though he now knew Gerard was his uncle. “Gerard was quite proud of my decision to follow my brother Osric into exile. Gerard felt Osric should not be alone.” Others, he noted, had differing opinions, including, unsurprisingly, his brother Brand, who thought the sacrifice foolish.

“Now there is one to study, one who was touched deeply in his time with the Profane.”

Selador, referring to the rival claims to the throne of Amber from Gerard and his brother Oberon, the former king, remarked he had met and talked to the latter, and found him a reasonable man.

“Who do you think would make the better king, removing all filial obligations?”

Finndo sighed. “It is difficult to be an immortal.”

“One wishes only to make the proper decision,” Selador replied.

Finndo muses that, given the existence of both a Fourth Realm and, in a more limited sense in Axildusk, a Fifth, perhaps both the contentious brothers could rule as king, one in each. “This will be the bone of prediction to be picked at by wolves,” he forecast. “We must learn more. There may be room for both Oberon and his brother.”



Finndo, meanwhile, has sent Asher, who we have heard little of so far in this story, to escort Lyra to Selador. Along the way, Asher learns her lineage name is nee’Manion, so that he might make a formal introduction. Much as he felt this needless foofaraw, he knew Selador would be pleased, and wished to oblige his friend. When the two pairs meet, Finndo takes the lead to introduce Selador, and Asher the same for Lyra.

“One is most pleased one accepted one’s offer,” Selador begins.

“Well, I was most happy to do so,” Lyra countered.

“One must ask, one will admit…there are certain reactions one has in your presence, and one wishes to pursue them.”

Selador continued, though, that he would be content with friendship if that was, given the mores of Draegeran society, that they could hope for without discomfiting Lyra.

“Are we friends, Selador?” she inquires.

“One would hope that friendship is the very least of what we might accomplish,” he replied. She turns her gaze to the Lost City before them.

“Have you been here before?”

“No. This is a first in many regards.”

Lyra recounts the history of the district, which started at Kieron’s Watch and spread out from there. 
“An attack, if you will, where things that should not even be contemplated were acted upon,” she said. “Many lives were lost, including those of children. We must grow a hardened shell to things that happen. The Lost City reminds me of my own childhood,” she lamented wistfully. “I am of a family, nee’Manion, a line that ends with myself. It is why I am with the Stig.”

Selador points out that, should she had children, her family line would continue.”

“If I meet the right man,” Lyra responds.

“I too am currently without parents,” Selador notes. “They are both lost. That is the best description. I am as you know not a common Easterner.”

Asher raised an eyebrow, but let the remark pass without challenge.

“There are worlds that exist beyond this one,” his friend continues, and a moment later he hears music in the distance.

“There you are,” Finndo explained. “The minstrels. They’re in a house further along the way.”

“Tell me of your family,” Lyra implores Selador, asking he has brothers and sisters.

“No. I was a singular event.”

“What a strange way to put it.”

Selador offers, “My mother and father can be described as being from two different Houses, like an Issola and a Jhereg.” The Lords of Law had been like family to him, instead of siblings, he continued, and what he had learned he had learned at his mother’s house. The practition of Law, he added, was beyond such legislation as kings and queens might adopt.




Asher is relieved when the second storey window of a nearby derelict house slams shut. He uses the excuse to approach the home, which had been well-built and made to last, he noted. Then, as he approached the front door, it swung open, and he unslung his Emitter. As he enters, he hears, “And then they took me, they cut out my stomach, and then they cut out my liver, and then my heart while I was still alive…,” confirming his initial estimate. He saw a ghost before him, indigo in colour save for a streak of bright green on its chest, and the same colour emanating from its eyes and mouth, and knew it to be a Wrath. It had no immediate reaction to it, and on questioning the spectre found it to be the type of passive ghost that, unless provoked somehow, merely endured in a place. It could not remember its name, or what it had been, or how it had come to be in this place, only that he was there.

“I have no future,” it lamented. Asher fires a single ghost-shot from his emitter, captures the Wrath in his one vacant Pentaglobe, and collected the ghostlight the creature had caused to appear around it by its existence, replenishing his cartridge. He then left the home and hurried after his companions, worried that other ghosts might plague them in this place.





Selador spots the minstrel perched on a second story balcony of another home, dressed oddly in a skull mask and gloves that appeared to strip the flesh from his fingers. Lyra, speaking of her family, said her father had been a soldierly serve to a Dzur lord, who had been kind enough to provide an introduction for Lyra to the STG, allowing her to join that elite organization. She had spent the first six months or so of her time there collecting files and so forth, before she began to be sent out on actual tasks. Finndo, meanwhile, has found a spot for the picnic and spread the blanket, then went off nearby to fetch additional food, in this case freshly broiled gamecocks that had been captured only the night before. He offers red or rosé wine, saying the white “has gone off.” (Or more possibly he has a low regard to that style of Draegeran wine, which Easterners pretend pales beside the vintages they produce.)


“Let us make a toast, Lyra,” Selador suggests. “A declaration as a memento upon this meeting, this event. Let us raise our glasses to Noble Thoughts, that have brought us to this place and time.”
He clinked his glass against hers, startling her, for this was not a Draegeran tradition.

“Careful, Selador,” she chided. “You might break the glasses.”

Asher has arrived on the scene as Finndo brings over two cooked gamecocks, their broiled skins golden in the light. The meal begins but Finndo and Asher, who had discussed the possibility before, begins to grow turgid, and they fear Selador might have lost the plot of the occasion. But they had prepared for this, and given the occasion, had thought of something that might amuse a Dzur.

Asher turns to Finndo and demands, in a loud and accusing voice, “Sir, I demand you take that back.”

Finndo, as on cue, responded, “I shall not.”

Selador protests, asking what their dispute is, but the two actors ignore them.

Finally, after more cross words, Asher, who earlier had unhooked his sword and unslung his Emitter, leaving them leaning against the outside wall of a home, leaped agilely into the air and, spinning, gave a sound roundhouse kick to the side of Finndo’s head, landing the blow with a heavy 'Thwack'. Asher knows the blows landed by him are but temporary in nature, so he allows himself to take pleasure in his newly-found art. He gets in another blow, and then Finndo, shaking himself from a false daze, responded in kind, and they ended up on the picnic basket, Finndo’s foot in the potato salad.

“The food!” Finndo remembers, and abruptly returns to the spot, hidden from the couple, where the gamecocks had been broiled, and he was joined almost immediately by Asher.

“Selador, are you part of this?” Lyra demanded, and Selador denied he was.

Lyra strides over to Asher and Finndo, drawing her sword. She used it to strike Finndo alongside his head, as the latter restrained himself from dodging away. Finndo, feigning seeing stars or perhaps actually doing so, collapsed against a wall. Asher, seeing a blade in hand, decides that game is over and sprints around a home toward his abandoned weapons. He had his Claws upon him, but he doubted that Selador would thank him for slaying his would-be girlfriend, even if she could be revivified. Lyra would probably take it much better, he thought.

“I believe your friend Ash needs to be taught a lesson,” Lyra announces, and Selador follows her in pursuit, but when they momentarily become entangled, Asher has the opportunity to don his swords and Emitter. He is willing to take a beating for his friend, but swords are another matter.

Lyra and Selador approach him, demanding him to explain himself. He responds the fight was no more than an entertainment, and he notices a certain sparkle has appeared in Lyra’s eyes as a result, though he does not say so. .



He offers them glasses of the rosé in apology. But instead of drinking, the couple punches in unison at his face. Asher worries for himself, not because of the blows, but how the glasses, if broken, might slice up the hands of his friends. Still, like Finndo, he makes no attempt to dodge. Selador, unused to fisticuffs, barely scrapes one side of Asher’s face, but Lyra more than makes up for that, and Asher realizes that, not only is he somewhat injured as a result, as least one of his molars has come loose. Dental decanting is always pricey, he recalled. He takes a step or two back, to allow Lyra some satisfaction.

Asher considers stripping off his arms and armour and allowing the couple a full demonstration of his art, even if that meant taking real injuries in place for non-lethal blows. Then, though, they hear the thrum of an arrow in flight, and the sound of it hitting the wall and sticking just above Finndo’s head, having flown there from the beacon atop the Imperial Palace not far away.

Lyra breaks off her attack to move quickly to the arrow, finding a message capsule wrapped around the shaft. She removed it, and then breathed a code word inside it. A hint of ghostlight demonstrated whatever safeguards had been in place were removed, and she opened the capsule and then the small scroll inside. “It is one of our arrows,” she announces. “Something is very wrong. I must go. Fortunately, this isn’t the worst place to be.”

She and Selador stride determinedly away, while Asher hurries over to Finndo. He is unsurprised when Finndo warily opens one eye in a squint, asking what had happened. When Asher explains, Finndo rises to his feet and looks about at the picnic debris. He takes a few moments to consider, but Asher suggests they should instead follow after the couple, in case their friends needed help, and Finndo agreed.

However, they soon run into a problem, in that Lyra has managed to hail a passing gondola, rare in this part of the river, and the couple is being poled along at a more rapid pace than Finndo and Asher can long maintain on foot. Finndo wishes that he had horses to hand, mystifying Asher, an Axildusk native who had never heard of such a creature. Moments later, however, Asher hears a strange sound from a nearby ghostlight boundary pole.

“Could it be?” Finndo asks before hurrying in that direction, and Asher follows. Soon they see a “horse” standing near the pole, and Asher is struck that its head resembles a Quinnial’s, if not the rest of the substantial body.

Finndo declares, “Now you will see what a cavalry man can do,” and he approaches the large animal, touching its head to calm it. Asher, meanwhile, is realizing his long nodachi would be needed to battle such a monster.

“It occurs to me, Finndo, that you could contact Selador psychically, and he could portal us to him.” Finndo demurs, claiming what do that when a horse was at hand. Finndo leaps onto the horse’s back, impressing Asher at his courage if not his wisdom, because a moment later his friend if bucked from the animal, and he lands hard on his posterior on the ground nearby.

Finndo rises painfully, and Asher decides to try the creature himself. Finndo warns him to be careful, warning a horse could kill with a single blow, but Asher sees fear, not hostility, in the eyes of the creature, and somehow a feeling of kinship, much as he felt with Bamboo. His friend spots another horse not far away, which he calls a “stallion” to the mare before them, and Finndo hurries off to see if this creature might be more amiable. It is not, and he ends up on the ground instead. Meanwhile, Asher, who had stroked the mare’s head and whispered in its ear, vaulted onto its back as well. The horse was discomfited, which it demonstrated by bucking about, but Asher managed to maintain his seat, shifting his weight to what he thought the mare might find most comfortable. Finndo stalked over, and looked chagrined to see Asher still atop the mare.




Selador and Lyra learned that their gondolier had earlier that same day taken two Jhereg’s to an uncustomary landing at the base of cliffs near the city’s dog track and, much newer, its locacobra “shed,” though in fact it was a magnificent glass structure. They assured the worried boatman his indiscretion would not be learned of by the Jheregs, after he feared for his family, and, landing at the same spot, found a rope ladder leading upward, which they climbed awkwardly, but not to the top. Instead, Lyra, who had led the way, found an opening in the cliff face and entered.

She and Selador came to a place where the tunnel divided, and they followed one. Soon after, they smelled the scent of many dogs, and Lyra announced they must be under the track, where kennels were kept in the infield. They emerged and crossed to track, Lyra pausing to use a master key to open a gate, to find themselves on Papers Street, having moments earlier spotted the glint of an Imperial Guardsman’s halberd, which were usually only carried when protecting the Empress herself. They spy the guard standing in front of a small shop, and Lyra advised that, while he might admit a Stig inside, he would certainly not do so for an Eastern, so Selador resolved to explore the nearby locacobra shed.

The Law Lord approaches and then enters the vast building, seeing two odd conveyances before him, like carriages connected in a row, but longer than customary. He spotted an enclosed carriage at the rear of one of what must be assumed to be the two locacobras, and made for it.




Finndo instructs Asher to ride for the locacobra shed, and he will follow somehow. Archer does do, and is well pleased by the experience, as strange as it was. The bond between horse and man, though new, also seemed somehow familiar to both. Asher crossed a bridge first to Whitestone, and then headed for another that would lead him to the locacobra shed, but he was stopped as he neared it by three Imperial guardsmen, who lowered their halberds in challenge. The sound of hooves striking cobblestones had already drawn many curious glances from passers-by, and the three soldiers were no different.

Asher did as best he could to explain what he had done, and one of the guardsmen allowed that he could pass if he paid a fee of five imperials. Asher knew he was running short of coins, but readily agreed, given the urgency of the matter. He rode over the bridge and then down a narrow lane before coming to the shed, which he briefly marveled at before getting off the horse. He thanked it for its service, and advised it to return to the wild as soon as possible, lest it be taken by less friendly hands. He did not know if the creature understood his words, though.




On the locacobra, Selador has found a sumptuously decorated salon within the enclosed carriage, and then an official of some sort, in a uniform resembling that of the Imperial Army and wearing a strange knife near her collar. She advised that this is the locacobra bound for The Red City later that afternoon, and that the one beyond it, called “The Running Bird,” was bound for Karion. Another locacobra, “The Emperor’s Progress,” had already departed for that city, with the Empress aboard for the first time. Whatever train Selador was on, the official noted, he would need a ticket that must be paid for. Determining from what the gondolier had said that The Running Bird was a better choice to see what might be afoot among the Jhereg, Selador leaves the locacobra and Asher, having moments earlier entered the shed and learned from another Jhereg where his friend had gone, to whit the “Red City Special,” saw each other and rejoined each other’s company.

“For pity’s sake,” Asher urges, “Portal Finndo here. If as you say we need to buy tickets, he would be the only one among us with any funds.”

Selador agreed, and moments later the Prince of Amber was with them. He seems familiar with the concept of locacobras, pretending to have encountered similar forms of transportation many times. “These things tend to run on time,” he adds, and the three men hurry to The Running Bird and board the rear carriage, which is similar to the one on the Red City Special,” though in pink rather than scarlet.

“Ah,” Finndo comments. “A club car. How refined.”

They are confronted by an official by this train, who seems less indulgent of Easterners than the one on the Red City Special.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? Easterners on their way to Karion. And very bold Easterners.”

He charges them four orbs each for a “return trip” to Karion City, and Finndo provides the needed coin. The official mentions he will return at some point for food, implying though when it is convenient for him and not them. The official also instructs them not to leave their carriage. Those further forward are first-class compartments, reserved for Draegerans only.

Questioned by Selador, the official notes The Emperor’s Progress had departed for Karion City an hour earlier, but it was newer and faster than The Running Bird, so they could not catch up to it.

Selador tries three times without success to reach Lyra by psychic contact, but minutes later she contacts him, asking where he is. He explains, and she says that, while a high-ranking official was in the shop on Papers Street guarded by the halberdman, it was not the Empress herself. “I don’t really understand,” she protests charmingly, as she does all things, including punching, Asher decided.

She teleports herself to Selador’s side as The Running Bird smoothly departs the shed. Except for a humming, the ride is remarkably smooth. Asher, seeing the stiffness that exceeded even what Selador usually exuded, stepped over and asked his friend how badly he was still hurt. The stoic Law Lord admitted he would still be some days recovering, and Asher’s intuition told him it might not be that long before they once against were forced to risk their lives, and he relied on Selador to take the brunt of any onslaught.

Asher began moving his hands over his friend, an inch or two away, sensing for harm, but to be sure, asked Selador where his most grievous wounds were. The Law Lord, though obviously uncomfortable with whatever price was taking place, allowed those were in his chest and his hip. Asher nodded and told him to stand still. Then, he left hand started to vibrate, becoming a blur, and he pressed against Selador’s chest, sending healing vibrations through him, another aspect of his new art. The Law Lord, surprised, admitted he felt much better and Asher repeated the process for his hip. By the end, Selador allowed he would be right as rain in another day or two.

A while after, the locacobra slowed and came to a stop, and the official returned to their carriage. Much as Maizak’s Teckla servant had asked the night before, he asked if the Easterners could use the weapons adorning them, and they confessed to some ability.

The Emperor’s Progress, the official reported, was stopped ahead of them and, not only that, faced toward The Running Bird, which should not be the case. “We have been told we must back up,” the official said, adding the one ordering that was known as Uillverforce.

Asher was gratified his intuition had proven correct, as he and his companions prepared to leave their carriage.

Transcript by R.Perry