A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

"What are you looking at, rock face?" She asked. Kaya immediately blushed and turned away.

"C'mon Amelia, be nice," Oliver said. "He mistakenly took interest in your pretty face. He didn't know that you were an absolute sea of darkness underneath."

"I'm not— wait..?" Amelia cut off, and went a bright shade of red, as she fished out the lone complement of Oliver's in what otherwise was a sea of insults. Oliver grinned at the unexpected weakness.

"So, Jorah, the pay is settled, right?" Oliver asked.

"Right…" Jorah said hesitantly.

"But you're still not happy," Oliver noted. "What is it you want? I can do better with the pay, if you need it. I think I will do that regardless. Next year your worth as soldiers will be far above what it is now. Your pay will reflect that."

"Uhm… Ser Oliver?" Pauline said, raising a hand as though they were in class. It was an unexpectedly endearing gesture.

"Yes, Pauline?"

"Uhm, you know that their current wages are reaaally, high, right?" She said.

"Apparently," Oliver nodded.

"Okay, just checking, Ser," she said, lowering her hand. Apparently, that was it.

"What troubles you, Jorah?" Verdant asked. He'd picked up on the boy's name during the course of their discussion, and he used it to the fullest effect, affixing him with that pale-eyed stare that he had, the sort of stare that saw straight into the heart of your soul.

"Mm…" Jorah seemed reluctant to say anything. But this was the type of thing that Verdant had done for years before Oliver's arrival. With Peter in his corner, the two of them had built this Cabin of Advice, and they were experts at coaxing the negativities out of a person and getting them to express what they really thought. Discover stories at empiren/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

It looked like Jorah wasn't going to say anything, but with a sigh, he finally relented under the weight of Verdant's gaze, and with the encouraging nods of people. "Forgive me, but I simply do not trust the nobility not to abuse such contracts."

"I'm with you on that," Oliver says easily. "From what I've seen, the nobility are pretty much scum."

It was hard to say who they were most shocked by – the Serving Class student gathering his courage to state what he really thought of their blue-shirted masters, or Oliver, a noble himself, so easily separating himself from the rest of nobility, and stating his distaste for them with genuine emotion.

He heard gasps from Blackthorn's retainers. The three boys that he'd brought with him looked similarly as surprised, with Jorah amongst them. Oliver rested his weight on his hands as he leaned back from the table.

He caught Blackthorn's raised eyebrow at him from the corner of his eye.

"Well… those were certainly a pair of surprising statements… Yours particularly, my Lord," Verdant said. "Though, your disdain for the nobility does shine through at times."

Oliver nodded. "Well, of course, you know. They're soft, for the most part. I haven't seen anything particularly impressive about most of them. Now, people like Lombard and Gavilan, people who you can tell know the battlefield, and have earned the titles that they hold, they're worthy of respect… but the rest of them, the people just born into it, they're irritating."

Jorah watched him carefully as Oliver went on his tirade. He so easily made enemies out of the majority of nobility, all the while sipping his tea, and reclining, as though there could be nothing plainer.

"Your father…" Jorah said carefully. "He made enemies of much of the nobility, did he not?"

"Much? I would be hard-pressed to point out a single ally that he had. As far as official allies, he certainly had zero. How can the most powerful swordsman in the entire land be at the very bottom of the noble hierarchy? That's evidence of a broken system, if you ask me," Oliver said.

Again, Jorah nodded. "I suppose that would explain your easy manner around us. You did not grow up as a normal noble would have."

Oliver smiled at that, a little too widely. 'If only you knew,' he thought to himself.

"Perhaps a master like that would not be so bad to serve…" Jorah said carefully, eyeing the reactions of those around it as he said it, to see if he could uncover any discrete.

But Oliver just shrugged. "If that's good enough for you. I can also swear to a God of your choosing to give you the sort of freedom that you asked for. Whatever it takes to get a retainer with your sort of mind on my side, I think I'd be able to do it."

"Does that settle your concerns, Jorah?" Verdant asked, a small smile on his lips as he watched his Lord work.

"Part of them," Jorah said, though he didn't exactly look content. "Sooner or later, I would be forced to swear to a noble anyway… I'd hoped to do it later, after I had more time to negotiate a better contract for myself. But am I likely to get better than this?"

He still seemed immensely doubtful, and that was understandable.

Verdant turned to Oliver. "Will you proceed with the swearing of oaths?"

"Here?" Oliver asked, surprised. "I thought we'd be doing it in a shrine, like we did with yours."

"That was merely my preference," Verdant said. "There are no strict measures that say that it has to be so."

"What do you three think?" Oliver said, turning to ask the three boys sitting next to him.

"Uhm, I'm fine doing it whenever… The sooner the better, I think?" Kaya said. "Aren't you going on a big expedition this weekend?"

"I am indeed," Oliver said, noticing how Blackthorn perked up. He still hadn't said any of the proper details to her yet.

"Me as well. I'm fine swearing wherever," Karesh said. "This place is kinda like a shrine to me, what with how nice it is."

It was impossible to dismiss Peter's smile when Karesh praised his cabin. He puffed out like a mother hearing her child praised.