Blood Shaper

Amanda stared at the problematic woman sitting across from her, who was looking back blandly without any outward reaction to the several minutes of silence that had gone by. Amanda’s first impression of Miri was of someone that could take it. What “it” was could be any number of things, but the woman who was Kay’s new majordomo had tenacity and grit somewhere underneath everything else she showed to the world. Sitting in silence wasn’t going to affect her at all and while it made Amanda look like the kind of person who enjoyed petty power plays like waiting for someone else to speak as some kind of test or to “put someone in their place”, she didn’t much care. She wasn’t that kind of person, though she would use that tactic and any other when they were necessary or useful, and the opinion of a stranger wasn’t going ruin her day. The silence helped her organize her thoughts, and if the other woman was going to let her take her time doing that she wouldn’t turn down the opportunity.

After a few more minutes Amanda reached a point where she felt she had everything in hand. “You are problematic.”

“I understand why you would feel that way,” Miri replied easily, “I would probably feel that way if I was in your position and had to deal with someone like me, too.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“I wouldn’t believe you if you said you did. You have more reasons to distrust me than you do to trust me.”

“How am I supposed to deal with you, then?” Amanda asked her directly, “How am I supposed to treat you, to interact with you as someone working for the same leader, with the added position as the person making this all run?” She waved her hand around her office but she was really indicating all of Avalon. “You’re going to be his majesty’s majordomo, which takes a good amount of work off of my plate, but it places you in a position of influence that I don’t know I should let you have. You’re saying that you can commiserate with my position, so what would you do if you were in my spot?”

Miri grinned at her, “I’d start exactly where you are and try and sound out the other person and form an idea of who they are, what they want, and how they’re going to act. Personally, I’d be a bit more circumspect about it, but the straight forward approach probably works better for you.”

“Why would you say that?”

“It’s likely experience. I haven’t had the time to really gather background on you, but what little I do know combined with meeting you in person, I have the feeling you’ve done this a lot. Going with the method you know the best Is often better than mixing and matching methods to match the people you’re interacting with, especially if you aren’t as experienced with whatever method matches that person best.” Miri tilted her head as she gazed at Amanda for a moment. “You approached this openly and with a little bit of aggression, almost daring me to prevaricate or hide from anything from you. It felt… dominant, like you were establishing that you are strong and have nothing to fear from me or this conversation. I bet you’ve dealt with a lot of fighters, the type that either don’t do well with following orders or just haven’t been in any type of military unit. Adventurers, singleton combatants, and the like, the kind who’s reputations and potential as a leader are based on how good they are in a fight, because that means they’ll be most effective and obviously know what to do.”

Amanda narrowed her eyes as she stared back at Miri. She wasn’t right, but she wasn’t fully wrong either. Adventurers weren’t the people she’d had to figuratively crush to establish a working hierarchy, it had been rebels, the leaders of future slave revolts, and abolitionists. Only some of them had used fighting capability as a leadership metric, but too many of them had needed an attitude readjustment when they’d discovered who they really worked for or followed. Quickly establishing a sense that she was in charge no matter what they would try was incredibly valuable. Miri was also right, sticking to what you already know was the better decision more often than not.

“You’re insightful, which is a good trait.” Amanda stopped for a moment, an impulse leading her to burying what she’d been about to say. “You know what? I can’t get rid of you at this point, so the only real option I have is to give you enough rope and see what happens. Give me your pitch, or your speech and we’ll let that settle the opening exchange.”

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“Well, it isn’t going to be a speech.” Miri murmured back, “I’m certainly not planning to monologue, so don’t feel like you can’t ask questions. I appreciate you letting me say my part.” She stopped for a second to scoot her chair closer to the desk and lay her arms in the edge. “First of all, I am not beholden to any other individual, organization, or nation. Not anymore at least, I severed my last permanent ties of obedience before I followed his majesty here. I am still loyal to people that I consider family or close friends, but not to the point of betraying anyone.”

“I understand you were a spy for the Isles for many years, they just let you go?”

She scoffed. “Of course they didn’t. I’m bound by oaths, promises, spells, Skills, and more to not tell anyone what I learned in that service, the parts that could ruin anything or set back any plans at least, they didn’t bind me not to share what I could do or that kind of thing. But one of the oaths I got from them was that they would leave me alone. Professionally of course, I’m still related to several of them. I don’t owe them anything, they don’t owe me anything.”

“That’s quite something to pull off.” Amanda said with her brows raised. “How did you pull that off?”

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“Being related to many of the decision makers helped, even if its distantly.” Miri’s normal affable smile slowly grew into a much sharper expression. “I also made sure they knew what a problem I could be for them if they didn’t do as I wanted. So in total, a mix of personal loyalty, a dash of family loyalty, a sprinkle of earning quite a bit of leeway with excellent work, and a generous helping of mutually assured destruction bought me my freedom from a life I no longer wanted.”

“And now you’re here.”

“There were steps in between then and now, of course. But yes, now I’m here because this is where I want to be, and it’s where I think is best suited toward me achieving me own goals.” She drummed the fingers of one hand against the back of the other. “The issue here, as I see it, is one of loyalty. Even if you perfectly trusted my declaration that I have no other loyalties binding me, which you rightfully shouldn’t, I have no real reason to be loyal to you and yours. At the very least I don’t have one sturdy enough to trust. Am I correct in thinking that?”

“That is one consideration,” Amanda replied with a nod.

“Good, then I’m not talking out my ass. I don’t have any institutional loyalty to Avalon as a nation or a concept, which many of your people do. I haven’t been here learning about what you stand for and what you seek to achieve, I only have second hand exposure to some of your people, which means that isn’t a tie binding me to Avalon and its people to ensure I don’t betray you. There also hasn’t been enough time to gain personal loyalty to his majesty King Kay, which is another common reason to be part of Avalon I presume. If I have developed the level of loyalty to him to follow him from my home to a brand new one in this short a time it means that I’m either crazy or a zealot, neither of which you can afford to have in a position of power of influence. That leaves only my own personal goals driving my behavior, and you don’t know what those are or how the intersect the plans of your enemies or enemies that are yet to come, leaving me as a potential vulnerability.” ʀ�

Miri stopped speaking for a moment after that, letting the silence sit and for Amanda to process her points, even if it wasn’t actually necessary. “I see King Kay as a massive ship, one of the ones that uses magic to propel itself and creates a great wake behind it that drags other smaller ships along. He’s formed a great fleet that follows him, and that fleet happens to be sailing in a direction I want to go, so I’d like to join in, for a time at least. I have resources and expertise to pay my way as we go, and I’ll contribute to the fleet as a true member while I remain with it. At some point my destination will arrive and I’ll decide whether to stop sailing there or continue on with the rest of the fleet, should I have become a true believer one way or another before we reach my stop.” She shrugged.

“That’s… an acceptable way reason to join up with a fleet, I suppose.” Amanda replied slowly, “But what is your actual destination? Just because you want to go there and the fleet is headed in that direction doesn’t mean the…” She hunted for a word, “…Admiral, leading the way will be inclined to shift the fleet in the direction that gets you there best, or that what you have to offer is worth the risks you bring with you.”

“Thank you for playing along with the metaphor,” Miri said with a smile, “We do love to reference ships and the ocean in the Isles. But yes, my goals.” She leaned forward, resting her weight on Amanda’s desk. Her eyes lit with determination as she looked directly into Amanda’s. “I want to be the best. The utterly dominant best at what I do, and I want everyone to know that I’m the best of them all. I want to create a staff for King Kay that every other ruler in the world envies with all they have. I want queens and dukes to try and poach me and I want lesser nobles to send their majordomos, butlers, and maids to learn from me to try and get a tiny fraction of my capabilities.”

It wasn’t often that Amanda felt the need to shy away from someone else’s intensity. She didn’t of course, that wouldn’t be professional nor would it uphold the gravitas of her position. “So it’s all about your ego?”

Miri resumed her original position quite quickly. “To an extent. It’s not all of it, but it is a major driving force. The reasons I left my job as an intelligence agent are the same as why I’ve pushed to be here in these circumstances. I want to be acknowledged for what I do, and I want to strive for the absolute peak of excellence. I want to reach that peak and let everyone see that I did. That would never happen as a spy. The better you are the less people know about you, the real you. And to be honest, I didn’t like the work.” She glanced to the side, a distant look on her face. “The practice, the planning, even the act of achieving my goal were all fulfilling, but having to lie to so many people about so many things was draining.” She shook her head minutely and looked back to Amanda. “While trying to figure out what I really wanted I discovered that what really fulfilled me was making things happen correctly, that I really enjoyed directing and managing things so that all the constituent parts and pieces came together to make the best possible whole.”

“And that made you want to be a majordomo?”

“Why not? Managing people is an excellent challenge, and being of service is a worthy cause. By serving his majesty I can make his life easier and ensure that things go well for other people because he’s more capable of doing his duties well. I suppose I could use my skills and desires to be evil or manage wars, trade, smuggling, piracy, theft, political aspirations, or so much more, but I played a servant’s role many times, and I came to quite like it. The best of the best are acknowledged no matter what they happen to be best at, so why not strive for excellence doing something that fulfills me and that I like on the day to day?” She smiled widely. “My goal, the reason I want to travel with Avalon’s metaphorical fleet, is to be so amazing at my job that no one can naysay me, including you. My personal code will keep me from betraying you on top of the fact that the best majordomo would never betray their lord. And…” She chuckled under her breath. “I would be very surprised if I don’t end up being personally loyal to his majesty in the next year or two at minimum.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I don’t think Lady Eleniah will allow for any other outcome.”

Amanda mulled it over for a while more before reaching a hand out to shake. “I look forward to working with you, should everything be as you say.”

“And if it isn’t, the rope you’re stretching out for me will be more than enough, won’t it?”

“Why of course it will.” Amanda watched her new potential ally with her own fierce eyes and burning passion behind them. “You aren’t the only one grabbing excellence with all you have. You may become the best majordomo the world over, but Avalon’s Prime Minister will be one whispered about with awe in every court the world over and then some.”