After the child's exit Rashleigh leans back in his overstuffed chair and exhales slowly steepling his fingers as a thin sarcastic smile plays across his lips.
Good to know that family politics remain unchanged in my absence. So... the old man still knows his business after all.
Sitting up he reaches for the end table where he had lain a thin leather bound manual titled "Mabar: An Atlas of the Endless Night" and opens it to the folded letter currently doubling as a bookmark. The letter had arrived three days earlier notifying a nearly forgotten son of plans carefully laid, family obligation, and how both pertained to him. Turning things over in his mind the pale, but heavy scholar was forced to admit that things were moving fast and his quiet days at the University were drawing to a close. He wouldn't necessarily miss them.
For some religious studies were a means to an end, not an expression of devout faith. In his case the end was politcal advancement within House Orien while at the same time striking out and breaking from family affairs in Thrane. Fortunately if there were any deity who would empathize with those motives it would be Kol Korran god of wealth, trade, and advancement. There was a certain irony in being able to finally escape the religious zealotry of his homeland by surrounding himself in studies with earnest believers of a different stripe. Sharn, on the other hand, had been a welcome breath of fresh air from the public face of morality maintained at all costs in Thrane.
But here was the letter in his hand informing him that family ties weren't forgotten so easily and an agent in a foreign land was still an agent. So it was that he was expecting today's letter and already knew why his services were required and that Professor Ingrans had been paid for his recommendation. Sometime before the expedition embarked a House member already in transit would be meeting him with a ward unfortunate enough to have been born into some sort of internecine political struggle for power among a Thranish nobles. Important enough for someone to hire assassins to ensure the line of ascension.
Rashleigh sighed. Leave it to the old man to hold out and call in all his chips at once. At least he was kind enough to give me a few days warning this time. Within the chest at the end of his bed were the fruits of that advance notice: a mithral shirt shiny and new and a wand that would allow him to perform as the dedicated healer his employer would probably be looking for. Hardly a student of the healing arts, the cleric had spent his time at University engrossed in tomes on planar travel, religious history, and the mysteries of the world. He would likely need the wand.
With only a few hours left until the meeting he rose and put the letter from Mendel d'Orloff carefully away. Leather bound manual in hand the cleric set out for his favorite cafe famous for its tea and scones. It was certainly going to be one of his last opportunities for a long while and he intended to enjoy it.
