Work Text:
The first spring after Alberich's rescue/ escape/ defection/ kidnapping (he still wasn't quite sure how to think of it), he discovered yet another way Valdemar was different from Karse: The spring flower festival.
Valdemar celebrated midwinter, with as much pageantry and pomp as Karse, and perhaps more—the festivities lasted for at least a week; gifts were exchanged; children had a special role that he had not yet figured out. His first winter in Valdemar, he'd been too busy trying to understand the nature of Heralds and the shape of politics to bother with festivals.
Valdemar also celebrated the spring equinox, although, like Karse, the thin resources after the winter made it a more quiet affair.
But parts of Valdemar, including Haven, celebrated the day mid-way between the spring equinox and midwinter solstice, when the early fruit was ripe and the herds had recovered enough to cull a few of the extras. They held flower-festivals during the day and bonfires into the night, and Alberich was caught by the absolute wonder of celebrating around a bonfire.
When he was a small child, he saw the fire from a distance, and started to move toward the pretty flames, but his mother caught and held him back.
"No, Alberich; stay far from the Fires."
"But you said fire is a gift from Vkandis!"
"It is, but… Vkandis made people out of earth and fire, and if you get close, you're so cute he might take you back. And I'd like to keep you a while longer." And she spun him around in a circle, and he laughed, and forgot about trying to get close to the fire.
The preparations for the spring flower festival took place over several weeks, and Alberich attended every single meeting, because of course the Heir attended every single meeting. The councilors wanted her to meet all their cousins and nephews (and grandnephews and second-cousins-once-removed) in the hopes that one of them would catch her fancy, and Selenay wanted to avoid spending the whole festival meeting male relatives, aged 7 to 70, of the Council.
Most of it, he ignored. They discussed where the merchants' stalls would go, and how to arrange them so the food and drinks were close together and the stalls selling garlands and children's toys were close to those, while the ones selling more valuable items—jewelry, blades—were not where the drunks would be congregating. And the dancing needed to be well away from all of that, but close enough that tired dancers would visit the merchant stalls between sets.
Alberich didn't know how to solve those logistics, but he understood the issues. When they started getting into "whose stall should face the main gates" he realized it had shifted from logistics to politics—he watched for who was pushing for this-or-that feature but ignored what they were arguing about.
Until they got to the bonfire. Apparently there had to be a huge bonfire in the evening, with dancing around it, and several smaller bonfires, spaced out for more dancing.
Fires, Alberich understood.
"The fires after, I will check," he said abruptly, as they were starting to discuss where to best place them.
It didn't matter to him where they were placed. After they had died down, someone had to check that they were actually out, not just smoldering in a way that any stray breeze could catch sparks.
The planners looked at him. Selenay looked at him. The king, he thought, would not have, but he was busy elsewhere. They apparently needed an explanation.
"The festival during," he said, "many people the fires watch. The festival after, the people sleep, but the winds do not. The ashes checked must be, new fires to avoid."
Selenay understood first—she had the most practice with his broken Valdemaran. "Oh! Yes, we'll need people to check the fire-sites after the festival."
"Check them, I will," Alberich said. "Others welcome would be." He'd gladly have help… but he was still going to check every single bonfire site.
One of the Heralds involved with the planning committee spoke up. "Won't you be… busy guarding Selenay?"
"The day during, yes. But after all sleep, the fires checked must be."
"Won't you be tired?"
Alberich shrugged. Fire-check duty was one of the few responsibilities that officers didn't use as punishments—it was unsafe to risk someone resentful or careless in the role. Most officers missed a bit of sleep here and there to check the fires, and at least there would be no dawn services for him to attend here.
One of the clerks nodded, made a note on the papers he was keeping, and that, he thought, was that.
The day of the festival, Keren and Ylsa escorted Selenay as if they were all just friends attending together, and Alberich held back, watching from a distance. His eyes scanned the crowds, quickly sorting people into "harmless" (almost everyone), "drunks" (likely not dangerous, but should be watched), and "trouble" (petty thieves, braggarts looking for a fight, people looking to settle grudges and escape in a crowd). Fortunately, even the "trouble" people seemed mild: He saw a few arguments over who'd slept with whose wife, and a few about who had gambled away an uncle or aunt's fortune. But he heard nothing political, and especially, nothing that seemed targeted at Selenay or the king.
Keren and Ylsa were watching people close to Selenay. Alberich was watching the crowds, looking for signs of trouble that stayed away from her until they might have a chance to strike. He found none.
He wandered through the food stalls—fresh stone-fruit and last year's apples, cooked into little tarts with flower-shapes cut into the crusts; spring wine, sweet with no bite to it; meat-bits roasted on sticks, easy to carry and eat while shopping and chatting. No few of them offered two sizes of foods: one for adults, with enough for a meal or at least a hearty snack, and a tiny version for children.
There were children everywhere: laughing, dancing, gathering flowers to make into garlands and crowns. Most of them avoided him; with the scars on his face and his dark greys, he must look frightening to them.
Alberich barely glanced at the children, other than noting them as "harmless with the potential to be attached to trouble." Others were tasked with their safety, and the festival had plenty of those guards and watchers. Which is why he hadn't paid real attention to the one getting close to him until he felt a tug on his sleeve.
He looked down, and a very small child—less than five years, he would guess—was holding out a… ribbon? to him.
The child said, "Share and share again" with a slight lisp, and pushed the thing into his hand before running back to a woman who was obviously looking around for him.
He looked at the thing he'd been handed. Not a ribbon—a strip of green cloth with a loop on one side and ties on the other, with two small copper coins loosely stitched, side by side, to the middle of the band. He looked quizzically at it, and then at the woman, whose eyes widened as she saw him.
She came forward cautiously. "I'm so sorry, sir! He meant no offense—"
"None is taken," he said as gently as he could. "But what means this?" He held up the cloth. Now that he thought about it, he'd seen what he thought were ribbons changing hands; he'd thought they were used to tie the flowers together.
"That's—that's an eyes-of-wealth," she stammered. "I know it's not much wealth, but we are not rich; Tammer didn't realize he shouldn't bother—"
"Bothered I am not. Confused, a bit, only. Most children approach me not." The child in question was now standing behind his mother's skirts, peering up at him.
"Oh! Well. You look a bit like my uncle. His father was from Karse… you are Karsite, yes?"
"That I am." There was certainly no way of hiding that.
"Kaspar is Tammer's favorite uncle but we don't see him often. He must've thought you…" she trailed off, obviously unsure what her child might've thought, other than that Alberich looked familiar.
He nodded. "No trouble he has been. So this—" he held up the… bracelet? It was about the length to tie on a wrist; it must be a bracelet "—a part of the festival, is?"
She nodded. "We share them for luck and prosperity. The two coins are supposed to be the eyes of mountain spirits who've grown restless and wander the land, sharing their wealth as they go."
Alberich looked at the two coins, barely held to the cloth by a sloppy set of threads. "These eyes, falling out of their head will be soon," he said, and she laughed.
"They're supposed to fall out! Well, not fall, exactly, but they're supposed to be removed, so you can… share the wealth, like the mountain-spirits do."
"Ah. So if I were to… perhaps a honey-candy purchase, and with a small child share it, that would the spirits please?"
The child's eyes lit up at the mention of honey candy, and his mother smiled. "I'm sure the spirits would appreciate that," she said demurely, and Alberich smiled in return.
He stepped over to one of the candy stalls, and pointed to one of their smallest candies, a tiny bit of honey-taffy on a small stick, the kind most merchants gave away as samples. These, apparently, were festival purchases intended for young children exchanging coins with each other: the coins would change hands a few times and then wind up with one of the merchants who'd brought low-price items that appeal to the very young.
The merchant eyed him nervously, but didn't say anything, as Alberich slid one of the coins out from under its threads and held it up. The merchant nodded, and he exchanged the coin for the candy, and Alberich turned around and gave it to the waiting child.
"Share and share again," he said, and then looked to the mother. "Correct was that?"
She nodded and smiled. "Exactly so." And then Tammer mumbled "t'ank 'oo" and ran off, and she started to step after him—then stopped herself, not wanting to be rude, but Alberich just nodded to her to go.
Now, equipped with knowledge of this sharing-tradition, actions that had previously been confusing made sense. He saw children exchanging simple cloth bracelets and then heading to candy and toy stalls, and saw adults with leather bracelets with coins stitched on them—or with delicate rings of embroidery, shaped like flowers, but no coin in the center anymore. He noticed that a few of the stalls were selling the empty-eyed bracelets; apparently the buyer was supposed to provide their own coins.
A nice tradition, he decided. It allowed even the poorest to take part in the hope of prosperity for the coming year, and gave an easy way to approach an interesting stranger.
He had not expected to be anyone's approachable interesting stranger this year.
After that, he wandered through the stalls a bit and was in a much better mood as he watched the dances.
There was so much dancing. So many types of dances. Line dances, square dances, ribbon-dances around a pole, circle dances, snake dances, dances with six people, dances with eight… Karse did not have dances like this, and certainly didn't dance in celebration around fires.
Alberich almost grew dizzy watching Selenay shift between partners. Although she didn't participate in every dance (no one could), she did dance quite a bit. All the dancing (in the daytime) was very proper, heavily chaperoned: nothing private, and very little touching beyond the occasional "take her elbow and lead her down the line."
Alberich watched carefully but was glad to see no dangerous encounters. The dances seemed to be a mix of "people aware of high-court politics who were on their best behavior" and "rowdy party crowd who were too drunk to recognize their own neighbors." He could tell who recognized Selenay by how cautious they were around her… and whether they glanced in his direction.
He scowled at anyone who stood too close to her, which served to make several young men step a bit away, which let him keep his eyes on their hands.
He didn't actually care if they hugged her close—he cared if they drew a knife from their belt. But he couldn't prevent one kind of closeness without preventing the other, so Selenay danced and smiled and Alberich dutifully glowered at her partners, and all was well.
The dancing and fires continued into the night, but Selenay left early—it was hard to guard the Heir in the dark, and she'd had a full day of festivities. After she was gone, Alberich found a place to sit and watch the fires.
The dancing continued, but with the children and elderly gone, it grew more energetic and more suggestive. Often, a couple would quietly dodge out of the ring of dancers and slip off into a cluster of bushes or a circle of trees, no doubt enjoying the "fertility" part of the flower festival.
And eventually, around midnight, the fire-tenders called the festival over. They shooed off the remaining few dancers (who were staggering more than dancing at this point) and doused the fires with barrels of water.
Alberich followed after them with a lantern, using a stick to poke through the ashes, stomping down any bits of coal that looked like they might still contain embers. The bonfires were much larger than the camp fires he was used to, but the work, he found, was the same: drag something through the ashes until he reached hard earth, kick the half-burnt logs around to make sure they weren't still smoldering, stomp or pour water onto anything that still glowed.
Sometimes, moving between fires, he came across couples embracing in what they thought was a private place.They scrambled away from him, scowling as they went, and Alberich paid them no mind.
…Until he realized he had a following. A few of the young men who were disappointed at having their fun disturbed (…their lady-friends had rushed off home, rather than finding new, more private spots for a tryst) started heckling him.
"Heyyyy, why you gotta spoil our fun?"
"Old man, get a girl of your own; quit scaring off ours."
"Go away! No watchin' unless you're joinin'—hey, Larina, come back—"
He ignored them all until they blocked his path and one of them said, "Go home and quit bothering us."
Alberich sighed; he didn't want to fight with (…injure) a pack of half-drunk teenage boys. "No bother to you I intend. The fires only I check."
One of them muttered to his friend, "What the hell did he say?"
His friend answered, "…that's a Karsite accent. Must've run out of normal people willing to work this late." And then he spoke to Alberich, "You ignorant fool—I know Karse lacks a proper education, so you probably don't even understand what's going on here."
His friend jumped in with, "Don't you know this is a fertility festival? We're just tryin' to celebrate properly!"
"Properly," he said flatly. He knew what after-dark "celebrations" were, and while they were an expected adjunct to any festival, he hadn't heard anyone try to call them "proper" before.
"Yeah, um, I don't know if they tell you how this works in Karse, but… this is a fertility festival. That means it's supposed to involve making babies." His friends smirked at his pretentious tone.
Alberich raised his eyebrows. Somehow, he didn't think that a tumble beside the path was the preferred method of making babies in Valdemar, even for a fertility festival.
The young men, seeing his dubious look, decided to explain. "We were making babies.
Alberich shook his head to indicate that, whatever they were doing, they needed to not be doing it here—but they misunderstood.
"We were! You damn illiterate cretin, don't know how babies are made?"
Alberich blinked, sighed, and finally told them, "Babies gifts of Vkandis are. In firepits find you them. For babies I search now," and he shoved the slack-jawed group aside and walked on to the next doused bonfire.
He heard them snickering behind him, but they left him alone, which was what he wanted.
Two weeks later, Kantor told him :Three different Heralds have begged their Companions to get me to explain to you how babies are made. Are you going to let them in on the joke?:
:What joke?: he replied. :No sense of humor have I. All know this.:
Kantor snorted. A few minutes later, he said, :I have told them you know all you need to know about the origins of babies.: