Lovu

  “How do we start?” Topal asked once she finished cleaning their dinner for the night and putting it onto the fire.

  “Well… first is finding something to talk about,” Lovu said, recalling his etiquette lessons as a child.

  Lehil, the elderly attendant who raised him, had been in charge of those lessons. They mostly focused on finding unoffensive small talk that could be applied in any situation – weather, hobbies, art. The kind of thing that was interesting enough to carry on brief conversations during feasts or tea parties, but that nobody would have a strong emotional reaction to. Once he had a good grasp on how to navigate those, they practiced how to react when someone said something rude or steered into a topic that he wasn’t familiar enough to hold a conversation on.

  Those lessons were all around the time he turned ten. After that, he was ready to start entertaining company and joining feasts, so the majority of his experience was “in the field.”

  “Let’s start with the weather,” he said, trying to emulate Lehil.

  “What about the weather?” Topal asked, her eyes screwing up. “Like, when storms wash out trade routes?”

  “That can work but try starting with something more casual. The goal is to find a baseline for yourself – a set of neutral expressions and gestures that you can easily maintain and replicate. Showing emotion is inappropriate for a member of the Voice’s family, so you want to be able to fall back onto that baseline any time an uncomfortable or exciting topic comes up.”

  “I’m not a member of the Voice’s family,” Topal said bluntly. He had been so focused on recalling Lehil’s words, he forgot to adapt the lesson. “But I guess that makes sense for merchants too. That baseline’s your guard… and once you have that, you can either dodge their attempts to probe for information or feint reactions to give away false leads?”

  “W-what?” Lovu asked, snapping entirely out of “teacher” mode as she jumped to a dozen different connections. He thought he understood her line of reasoning, but not only was the vocabulary completely unlike Lehil’s, her entire attitude was like she was going into a fight. “I’m just talking about how to be polite.”

  “I don’t care about being polite, I care about being able to go toe-to-toe with people trying to get information out of me,” Topal said, scowling at him. “I thought it was the same with nobles as it is with merchants.”

  “No. My lessons were only ever about how to avoid embarrassing my family or being inappropriate with people below my station. I was taught how to pick up on people’s emotions to make sure they were comfortable and content. All good hosts should be able to do that.”

  “Okay…” she said, although her tone made it clear that she wasn’t satisfied by his answer. “How do you do that?”

  “Well, everyone has a baseline. So, when you first meet someone, you begin with mundane, unemotional topics to get a feeling for theirs. Then you look for any variations to know how comfortable they are with the current topic. You can either pivot to another topic if they seem uneasy or lean into the ones that make them happy.”

  Topal’s eyes seemed to dig into him, making calculations as she dissected his words. After a moment, she sat up straight and returned to the neutral expression she had used before. “Alright. Let’s start with learning how to be polite then. You said weather?”

  “Yes, I think that’s a good place to start,” he said, putting on his own neutral smile and meeting her gaze. “So, this summer has been hotter than usual.”

  “A bit, but I remember a few years ago it was even worse…”

  They worked their way through a meaningless conversation while they pantomimed eating a meal. Lovu started the motions at first and after a confused look, Topal followed suit. As they talked, he noticed her subtly adjusting her posture, her gestures, even her words. It was surprising to see just how quickly she adapted when it had taken him months of lessons to find a strong baseline. Hers still wasn’t perfect, but she started making progress almost immediately. Once they reached a natural lull, he moved back into teacher mode.

  “Good work, although some of your gestures are still too stiff and feel unnatural,” he said, pointing at her hands held awkwardly out in front of her. “Practice will eventually fix that, but they also feel out of place for you. Your baseline shouldn’t be too far out of the ordinary for you, or it will be harder to keep up and will have more holes. Think of it as a mask of your own face instead of someone else’s.”

  “Okay, like this?” she asked, letting her shoulders drop a bit more and relaxing her grip on the imaginary utensils in her hands.

  “Much better. The only exception would be your expression,” he said, looking at the subtle scowl that practically always rested on her brow. “Generally, your baseline should be positive, but not overly so. That makes it easier for your guests to relax. Your… face covering can be both a help and hinderance in that regard. You don’t have to worry about controlling your mouth, but it also means everything you communicate has to come from your eyes, which are arguably more difficult to control.”

  As soon as he mentioned the scarf, he could see the ripple of annoyance run through her eyes, proving his point. To his surprise, she seemed to recognize it without looking in a mirror. Her face softened as she put on a new mask. “Is that better?” she asked, although there was still an edge in her voice.

  “It is. Now let’s try again with a new topic,” he said, coming up with more examples. Unfortunately, she hadn’t spent much time going to the theater or reading literature, so a lot of the topics he was used to were harder to apply, but they were able to find enough common ground on things like food.

  They kept cycling like that, going back and forth between the talking, Lovu critiquing her baseline, and Topal adjusting. Not long after, their food finished cooking and they ate as they spoke. He tried to teach her some noble etiquette too, but it was hard to display without plates, utensils, or… anything really. Plus, she was far less interested in it than the conversational practice. By the time they wrapped up for the night, she had built a solid baseline, although she still had trouble maintaining it consistently, especially when sensitive topics like her scarf came up, and she was visibly fatigued by the end. Still, fantastic progress for just one day.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “Tomorrow we can practice more. Eventually, you’ll be able to keep up your baseline permanently when you need to and those gaps in sensitive topics will close up too. Do you have any other questions?” he asked as he stomped down some grass where he planned on sleeping for the night.

  “You said earlier that you only ever learned to be polite, right?” she asked as she stared down into the fire. “That was the whole point of the lessons for you?”

  “Yes…” Whatever thought had taken root in her mind was clearly still there, but he was struggling to figure out what it actually was.

  “What kind of people were you talking with?” Her eyes left the flame to study his face.

  “Nobles, mostly. I met with merchants when I needed to order furniture or-”

  “No. I mean like… when you talked about hosting people, did you only ever host people who you were friends with? Did you ever meet with strangers?”

  “Well, everyone’s a stranger until you get to know them,” Lovu said with a smile as he recalled one of his favorite aphorisms from Hikim’s writings. “Typically, unless there is a clear reason to do otherwise, the person of the higher status is the host by default. As a member of the Voice’s family, there were very few people above me, so it was normal for me to welcome guests into my villa. Most of those guests could be considered strangers the first few times we met.”

  “But did you ever go out of your way to invite strangers to your villa? How involved were your family in you meeting new people?” she asked, growing frustrated as he seemed to talk around whatever she was getting at.

  “I… don’t know how to answer that. Most of my guests were people my sister introduced to me or vouched for. Others were from families that are close friends of mine, although the individual people may not have had strong connections to my siblings.”

  “What about the merchants? Did someone recommend them to you?”

  “Of course,” he said, although he knew that he could be drifting close to sensitive ground, so he moderated his tone. “As a member of the Voice’s family, only the best artisans would be able to put together what I needed. While I eventually built a strong network of trusted craftsmen and the merchants I needed to communicate with them, I started with recommendations from Fitmi.”

  “And how much importance did your family put on the… variations you noticed in other people when you talked to them? Did they ever ask to hear what you saw when you hosted guests?”

  “Not much really,” he said, filing through his memory. “I would write my sister letters occasionally about developments in the villa and I sometimes talked about our conversations there… but she never directly asked about them as far as I can tell.”

  “Huh… okay,” she said, turning back to the fire as if the conversation was over, despite him still being completely lost.

  “Are you not going to share the reason for all of these questions?”

  “I can if you want,” Topal said, still not looking at him. “But I don’t know if you want me to.”

  “I won’t know until you say it.”

  “Alright, just don’t get upset at me if you don’t like it,” she said, turning to face him. “There’re a lot of gaps in what you were just teaching me.”

  “Oh goodness. One lesson and you’re already an expert,” he said, putting enough of a jovial tone into his voice to make it clear he was joking, even if she didn’t react to it.

  “Maybe this is just me coming from a different angle, but you were teaching me all of this the same way I was taught how to fight. Control yourself to avoid giving away your own thoughts at the same time you read your opponents to predict what they’re going to do. I don’t mind that. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m looking for. But you don’t really seem to view it that way. You go through all of the steps needed to understand what the other person is thinking and feeling and then just… do nothing with it.”

  “And what would I do with it exactly?” he asked, an anxiety growing in the back of his mind until it was so large that he couldn’t stop it from leaking out.

  “There are dozens of things. As a merchant, you could poke at weaknesses to get better deals or prey on their concerns to sow unease about your competitors. If it gives you a heads up on something big that’s about to happen, you can prepare to protect yourself or capitalize on the opportunity. If you were good enough at it, you could completely smother other caravans over time by outperforming them. I’m sure nobles would use the information differently, but the principle’s the same. But, in your mind, the only answer is to ‘make them more comfortable.’”

  “That is the duty of a good host,” he said, still no closer to understanding where she was going.

  “Ugh, I know but-” she started to say before something clicked. Grabbing her sword, she unsheathed it and pointed it at him. “Think of it this way. Imagine I taught you everything you needed to know to use this sword in a fight. How to defend yourself, get around someone’s guard, look for openings, target their vitals – everything. But instead of telling you that you were learning to kill someone, we only practiced with feathers on sticks and I told you it was all so you’d have the ability to tickle people really well. You’d be a lethal fighter, but not realize it and act surprised when people bring that up. That would be weird, right?”

  “I suppose it would,” he said, falling into thought. His immediate reaction was to reject the idea, but he had given into that impulse a few too many times already. While he couldn’t deny that the depth of his lessons was a bit… unusual given what he used those skills for, it wasn’t exactly what she was describing. As he reflected on his lessons with Lehil and how the parties he hosted went, he noticed a pattern.

  His face ached as he thought of Tama Foyrilmang.

  Even though he knew things about her family, it was only a vague idea from rumors. He had never actually spoken with her, even at larger events like feasts where he could have easily invited her to his table. She wasn’t the only one, either.

  As he wracked his brain to tally the people he knew, there were seven Lords that kept coming up: Lords Vor, Ngev, Kiv, Lao, Vommo, Mipli, and Waku. All of the friends he felt close enough with to invite into his villa were either members of those seven families or a part of their retinue. At larger events, he interacted with people from outside of those families, but their conversations were so brief that he struggled to remember most of them. Of the 51 Lords, he could only recall meeting people form less than half of them.

  His family had always handled the rest.

  Even if it seemed obvious, it had never really been worth thinking about. The people he interacted with regularly were all close friends, so why wouldn’t he focus more on them? It wasn’t until he realized that every single friend he had ever had, even going as far back as Akil, had been introduced to him by either Fitmi or his father. They were his family, so he had no reason to distrust their intentions, but the realization made him feel a bit sick.

  Maybe they were trying to protect me? Clearly, some Lords are not exactly on Fam’e’s path… but in that case, why did they not just warn me?

  Fitmi, Ete, and the Voice all surrounded themselves with members of those seven families, which comforted Lovu for a moment… until he realized that even with that, they still interacted regularly with practically every other Lord as well. He was the only one who didn’t.

  Reaching that conclusion snapped him out of his thoughts, which made him realize just how long he had been sitting in silence. Topal was quietly waiting, watching his face. “I… do not have an answer for what you noticed but thank you for pointing it out. I will think on it.”

  “Hopefully it’s nothing,” she said, poking at the fire. It was her turn to take the first shift for night watch. “Sorry if it ended up being a pain.”

  “No need to apologize,” he said as he laid down. He faced away from here, welcoming the heat of the flame on his back, but didn’t manage to fall asleep until just before his shift started.