Last week we continued with the Leisegang interaction. The issue was resolved fairly peacefully and was revealed to have been caused by Florencia manipulating Barthold in attempt to curtail the Leisegang influence.
Sylvester returned from Ahrensbach with gifts, materials, and correspondence from Ferdinand. A more simplified method of producing the maximal quality paper was also revealed. Unfortunately the highly coveted “very good” praise was not to be had for Rozemyne’s efforts.
The story left off with a trombe hunt to create more fireproof paper. Following that was the starbind ceremony where Zack was married and Damuel learns of Philine’s future intentions.
Where do you predict the story will take us in the near future?
Apart from Tuuli’s coming of age, which will have a blessing-related incident for near enough certain, I’m drawing a blank. With how many hoops Rozemyne would have to jump through to justify gifts for commoners, I don’t see how she can sneak any larger gift to Tuuli, so I think tools of her trade and dresses are out of the question. She might be able to slip her some small charm, with some effort, but even that will be difficult. Also aren’t all of Rozemyne’s orders at the Gilberta Company made by Tuuli at this point anyway? It’d be rather odd for the person who is getting the gift to also be the one to make it. ^^
I don’t see how the Entwickeln would give Rozemyne much of a chance to show off. Entwickeln must be done by the archduke, so the best Rozemyne might be able to do herself, is to use a large scale Waschen again, which we’ve already seen. The only difference would be that she’d be doing it on her own, without Ferdinand, but also on a much smaller city. Naturally she will donate mana to the foundation, like she did last time, but that happens inside the castle, with only the archducal family present, so that’s hardly showing off and doesn’t involve the schtappe at any rate.
It’s definitely become more difficult for Rozemyne to get gifts to the lower city people in person, but through others it’s still somewhat possible. Thinking about it maybe a gift of some of the cloth she received from Ferdinand could be possible since it can potentially be used to make hair ornaments.
You might be right that the entwickeln won’t involve Rozemyne too much. Yes it’s the Aub’s job to deal with foundational magic in the duchy. However when Rozemyne is around things are bound to get interesting.
Rozemyne buys a new hair ornament every season, and the autumn one will probably be bought shortly before or after the summer coming of age ceremony. Rozemyne could give Tuuli a gift at that occurred.
The problem is that Rozemyne is never alone with commoners, so even giving a gift when they are face-to-face isn’t an easy endeavour. And as we’ve seen in several past events, even being solely in the presence of clearly utterly loyal retainers, isn’t enough.
However, now that Rozemyne has quite the number of name-sworn, this might have become different. If ordered to keep a secret, the name-sworn literally become incapable of telling, so if she can go into the meeting with solely name-sworn retainers present, that might be enough to risk it after all. But I still do not think she’s likely to do it, since she doesn’t like absuing the name-swearing system for personal issues. She might do it for bigger picture stuff, but I don’t think she’ll do it for personal convenience.
…why again would she need to keep it secret from her retainers again?
Probably the same reason why she has kept them out of the loop this entire time: The secret is just too big and volatile to take any risks.
Considering how loyal they are, we can probably rule out any intentional leaks, but either swearing them to slience via name-swearing or keeping them out of the loop would make sure there can’t be any accidental leaks either. They can’t accidentally spill any hints toward something they don’t know and if they name-sworn are ordered to silence with the proper wording, the only way they could ever reveal something, is probably by having their heads examined with a memory searching magic tool (probably post-mortem, since I suspect they’d rather kill themselves than allow this).
Well, giving a gift doesn’t mean revealing their past. Rozemyne likes to protect her craftspeople is already common knowledge.
Just like Barthold, just because they are name sworn doesn’t mean they can’t betray them.
Roz is better off protecting the lower city and keeping them at a distance. She already knows if someone (harmut) looks close enough they can see the connection.