Chapter 7

5 Noel 1061

Uenmeisteur (Minister of Coin) Ilwin Haelbar, a middle-aged man with a flat wall-like face, sat quietly in the Waes Langhaus (Great White Hall), his chair leaned back against the wall. His arms were crossed across chest. He looked less like an attendee to the festival and more like an observer. A bored observer. He sat alone at a crowded table. Conversation whirled about him like a breeze through a screen. He had left his assigned seat at the Dux’s table when the wine arrived. He hoped to avoid the council meeting because he disliked the Duxhalle (small council room).

As a young man, when Ilwin’s father was the Uenmeisteur for the former Dux (Naeldric’s father), Ilwin was fascinated by the idea of the Duxhalle. He would watch his father march off to that imposing iron door, watch it shut behind him with a scrape and a thud. He’d wait in the hallway for him. It was in the oldest part of the keep where the hallways were the lowest, narrowest, and devoid of windows. Torches painted the ceiling black with smoke. The air smelled of stone, ulth (earth) and people. It was hard, even for a child filled with excitement, not to fall asleep while he waited through the long deliberations. Most of the time his father would emerge wearing a triumphant expression. Then there were the times he shuffled out, his head hung low, and in his eyes swam a frenzied worry. Yet no matter his condition, his father would scruff up Ilwin’s hair, take him by the hand and they’d make the slow ascent to the open, airy part of the keep. His father would always say, “Let’s get some air, the work is done for now.” That work appealed to Ilwin in an obtuse way. He enjoyed working out how things worked, not the work itself. The objectives at hand seemed less interesting, almost obvious to Ilwin’s active mind. How his father and the other meisteurs (ministers) decided on the objective, and the sort of social alchemy employed, was the dark art that captivated Ilwin. The meisteurs were portrayed openly as working one way, but Ilwin found the actual story behind how things got done was different and always something more slippery.

From a very young age Ilwin understood a vote wasn’t a count of tallies, it was the score for countless conversations, receipts for gifts given or promised, a measure of one’s standing or a measure of how willings others are to be seen standing close by you. He found his father worked outside the Duxhalle. Inside, he just measured the success of all his work. His father, Ilwin knew, was the most powerful man next to the Dux in all of Fael. If one needed something, they needed access to his father for it to happen. Yet, his father shuffled through those halls seldom appearing powerful. At dinners, his father sounded more of defeat than any other notion. Yet, it was said the autumn asked him when to change the colors in the leaves.

Ilwin’s father passed during a plague. Dux Fraedrik appointed Ilwin, now a young man, to take his place. He entered the Duxhalle with all his optimism and fascination. He treated it as an inner sanctum, the heart that propelled Fael, and a holy place. He found the room small, stifling, stuffy. He found the discourse to be simplistic, shortsighted. He found the meisteurs (Ministers) all too eager for him to replace his father. They treated him with smiles, shoulder rubs and enthusiasm for taking certain positions, positions they wanted him to take. They always had a bowl of wine poured for him. It only took him one meeting to glean that the king used to lean on his father more than the others. And the Dux, unlike the meisteurs saw him as a true replacement, a like part put in the place of a like part, a dulling blade replaced by a sharper knife, freshly oiled. The other meisteurs had other ideas. They wished to inherit his father’s influence and control. All of which seemed petty to Ilwin.

The subsequent meetings in that oppressive room couldn’t end quickly enough for Ilwin. He played the part of a newcomer eager to please, who feared that he had to earn his spot first. Like his father, Ilwin’s real work occurred outside of the Duxhalle. That room was a foggy mirror of all the work that outside of it. Ilwin even attempted to send a deputy in his stead but Dux Fraedrik grew angry and demanded he attend personally. In time, the meisteurs fell into their old roles, seemingly unaware about when or how they failed to control the newcomer.

Two decades slipped by before Dux Fraedrik died. The Dux’s oldest son died a day later, hours before his own coronation. (The official story was an illness, but Ilwin knew better.) That left prins Naeldric to take the crown.

Naeldric mistrusted his father’s meisteurs and moved to remove them. But when it came time to remove Ilwin, he failed. Ilwin was called into the Duxhalle alone to face the recently crowned Dux. Naeldric’s newly appointed Stigvird Lothar (a young man Ilwin mistrusted) held the door open for him with a smile. But when Ilwin exited the Duxhalle still wearing the golden Munznaedle (a brooch of a golden coin with the imprint of Fael on its front), Lothar looked surprised. Lothar simply asked, “How?” And he would continue to ask that same question to everyone (but the Dux, he wouldn’t dare question him) and the only answer Ilwin ever gave was, “Fuck sakes, egghead. Give them different names. Dress them up in their own tastes. They’re still just grubby creatures who shit, piss and eat. Learn their diet; avoid their waste. It’s a fucking easy game. You should play it sometime.”

Ilwin enjoyed Noel to see who spoke with whom. How they held themselves during those conversations. He observed Bastion danced with a girl that wasn’t his wife. He recognized her face but couldn’t recall her name. He asked the lady seated to his right and she told him. And that name was the key to unlock all sorts of memories. Bastion and the older prins from Neeklow were tutored by a northern monk when they were kids. He didn’t trust that monk, he was too good at planting ideas. Ilwin noted that and maneuvered his dismissal.

Ilwin witnessed Raban and Bastion exchange a warm greeting with the tall merchant from the group that brought the wine. He made note of that.

When a magu (messenger) whispered that the Dux called a private council to happen after the feast but before the private party to happen at the end of the night, Ilwin pretended he knew nothing of it and balked. Aside from his disdain for the room itself, the idea of missing all these fertile interactions there to be harvested irritated him. He committed to somehow missing the summons. Then, an hour or so later, came the tap on his shoulder. He didn’t need to look to know it was a magu there to urge him to head down to the Duxhalle. He attempted to ignore it. He pretended he didn’t feel it. The persistent young man tapped and then tapped again.

“Bremalt’s ass, can’t you see I’m ignoring you?” Ilwin pushed himself to his feet with a grunt, then gestured he would go.

The magu said, “I’ve been told to lead you there personally.”

“What? You think I can’t find my way?”

The magu was young but full of confidence instilled by being sent by the Dux and said without fear, “It’s not the route, it’s whether you will follow it that concerns the Dux”.

The magu waited for Ilwin to get to his feet then took off at a brisk pace, fully anticipating Ilwin would follow. Ilwin watched him go a few steps then ducked behind a gathering of people. They noticed the Uenmeisteur (Minister of Coin) in their midst and bowed respectfully. "Oh come on, you do that and I'll be found for sure." They laughed. He played the part of a charming crotchety old man so well that only those who had dealings with him knew to respect him. Everyone else just thought him lucky, and somehow always nearby when things happened, but never the reason for those things. Ilwin heard the whispers behind his back, "A pale shadow of his father," and it gave him fulfillment.

From cover he watched the magu walk off unaware he had lost his ward. Ilwin then wandered off, a satisfied grin on his face. He moved amongst the tables, plucking food from the trenchers and bowls of those he passed. He took some by surprise with this move, and they would look up, offended even angry looking. Then they'd recognize the Uenmeisteur and give a warm chuckle of recognition.

Ilwin stopped at Raban’s table and forced a smile, his eyes held wide open. Then plucked a few cherries from the table and filled his palm. A moment passed before he felt the return of the tapping magu. “Right,” Ilwin said. “I must have lost you in the crowd. Go on, I’m right behind you.” Ilwin winked at Raban and followed the magu out.