Ambassador

Harvey Sunson

After leaving the secluded kitchen, meeting that servant girl had been a dream. Like a phantom, she had drifted in and quickly back out of his world, Fabian mused. Although perhaps he had merely been reading too much tragedy. 

Abruptly, a shoulder bumped his in one of the many tall, long corridors.

"Sorry, B-barron. I-mean - Blith. Este." The stuttering caught him off guard. He spun.

"Hello, yes?" And at the reply, the speaker seemed shocked, too. A young man, shorter and a few years younger than Fabian, was adjusting his thin-framed glasses over a pair of oval, wide grey eyes. His mouth, like Yusup's had, back in the carriage, fished for a moment. Fabian spied no sharp teeth under this.

"What's your name?" He held out a hand, only to then realise that the man - no, he was a boy, really, had an armful of books. Each one was thin and large, like an atlas. Nevertheless, he managed the handshake.

"Harvey Sunson. Nice to meet you." His glasses flashed in a way Fabian had only seen in illustrations, and somehow caught the light even in the darkened hall, with almost zero light sources present. Although his first words had been shaky, he now introduced himself in a show of confidence.

"Sunson? Are you his - nephew, or grandson?" He'd almost forgotten that they were allowed to bring family along with them, although as far as he knew, almost no one had taken the opportunity. Harvey shook his head furiously, in a way that somehow conveyed both the fact he was tired of being asked that question, and the fact he would never get tired of answering it.

"His son."

"But, you're so young! -" Marquees Sunson was fairly old - far too old to have child as young as he was.

"Not really. I'm sixteen. My sisters are younger." Fabian vaguely remembered a crowd of girls being ushered into a carriage a day earlier. Sensing that this conversation was edging on the awkward, he changed the subject.

"I see... and how do you know my name?" More and more people seemed to know him these days, and it was slightly scary. It was never him they knew. It was Barron. The Barron, heir to the Blitheste estate. Barron Blitheste.

"I know everyone here. Being well prepared is my forte." He flashed a half-smile and Fabian finally noticed the titles of the books he clutched: North Varalian noble family lineage; the rivers of Greater Varalia; Weapons of the Wars; and A botanical history of Hequetri and surrounding counties. Well. How... studious.

"Is it?" He knew there were a million, much more useful questions to be asking but... he couldn't help himself. "What exactly do you know about me, then?"

"Well... You're Fabian Blitheste. You're the heir to the Blitheste family estates, and of Viscountess Jijisa Sans-Blitheste, your mother. Your father is Lord Peter Blitheste..." But Fabian knew all of this. Well, really, what had he been expecting? There was hardly anything a complete stranger would know about him that he himself wasn't aware of. Still, he let him rattle on for a while about Fabian's grandparents, about his elder sister, Fauna, and her new husband, and about his younger siblings. "... your father has ties with various exotic goods traders in the north, notably.... Who specialises in heavy masonry, catapults and high-tech, state-of-the-art guns and bows." He stopped and at last met Fabian's eye. The junior Sunson's iris wasn't grey, but rather a murky, light blue. Like a cloudy autumn day.

"Thank you, Sunson." A fascination appeared in the boy's eyes, and he nodded as though he could read Fabian's mind.
"The pleasure's all mine, Blitheste." And so he turned, and lunged back down the dark corridor, until his gold-tinged shadow had flickered to nothing, and died within a pool of dark, plush carpet.

Well. How... intriguing.