There should have been something more. There should have been a great ship breaking the waves in the harbour of Cerenis, its hull a mass of carvings, its bow crowned with a mahogany figurehead and emblazoned with dragonfly emblems. It should have had a deck made of teak and cherry wood and other precious woods aside, and sails coloured with rich, patriotic island dyes. There should have been silk pennants flying, there should have been tawny trumpets winking in the sun, and burnished armour on heralds, shining bravely. The ship should have been bucking in the bright waves, guided to its mooring by the rhythm of ceremonial oarsmen manning great oaken oars; row upon row upon row. That would have been right. That would have been fitting. That was how nobility from a great House of the Yoreiq Isles was supposed to travel. There would have been a story in that, it would have been a sensation. There would have been crowds.
However, there were no crowds, just a dock bustling with the day-to-day business of the port. And there was no great, fluted ship - merely a quite innocuous merchant trading vessel, one that made port at Cerenis quite frequently, and was no out-of-the-ordinary sight. It wasn't that the Fairweather Shanty was a bad ship, thought Lady Orienne na Castellan, who stood on deck, with a hand on the ship's railing. It was just wasn't right. Orienne sighed into the seaspray. With the available money in the House's coffers, passage on a merchant ship was all they could afford, although the Captain, of course was under the impression that the Doyenne preferred to travel with a low profile.
She became aware of her chief herald and advisor, Caspar of Ligne, standing just behind her right elbow. "We are almost moored, Lady," said the courtier pointedly, dipping his silvering head. Orienne was watching the activity below. "Yes, Caspar, I can see."
Caspar shuffled his feet, but felt there was a point he needed to mention to his young Mistress.
"It is likely he won't come himself, you know, he'll-"
"Send someone, yes." They spoke of Viscount Alistaire Dacre, the kingdom official in charge of liasons with overseas visitors. "That's how it is, now."
Of course, in times past, when the first members of the House had come to Le'ranna and established holdings here, the news of the arrival of people from the Isles would have been enough cause for a Festival on its own. Cerenis would have been buzzing with it, and there would have been a procession along the mainstreet. Accounts were written in the family diaries. The delegation would have been sure of a warm reception at Court. Now, things were less sure.
"I am sure he and his household are most occupied with Festival preparations." said Caspar, more for the sake of hearing the words than anything else. Sometimes the Doyenne's down-to-earthness worried him.
Orienne shook such nostalgically dreary thoughts from her head. She needed this to work. And she would see that it did. Besides, they had a Festival to attend. When news of Serendipity's great celebration had reached the Isles via a magical missive, Orienne had decided that this was an invitation for her, and that she would use it to make something of the responsibility she had been given.
Below, the moorings had been secured, and descent ramps were being slotted into place.
"Ravenna, attend me." said Orienne, rather brightly, turning away from the railing and towards her small party. Heralds arranged themselves. Guards put on suitable armed-guard expressions. The raven-haired lady's maid she had called swirled to her side, bending to re-check the arrangements of her lady's dress and hair. Orienne could feel the girl quiver with pent-up, pre-Festival excitement. She could only wish she felt the same way.
The disembarkment was quite a spectacle. Two tall guards, resplendant in copper House armour, and a standard-bearing, liveried and generally smartened-up Caspar preceded their Lady. She herself was tall and bronzed, her face and wide brown eyes serene in their beauty. Her long hair, black under the brightly coloured silk that it was plaited with was arranged in several skeins and curled into an elaborate bow. Dressed in the Yoreiqan style, as she was likely to remain throughout her visit, she was indeed colourful. The slender girl who attended her appeared to be almost skipping as she walked from over-excitement. Behind them, on the shoulders of four litter-bearers was Orienne's preferred mode of transport: a shining, silk-swathed, noblewoman's litter, made of some stout but unidentifiable wood. Chains of bright, subtly glowing flowers wound around the litter's canopy. Following the litter were two white mules burdened with wooden chests and pack saddles, and closed in at the rear by guards. Orienne descended slowly, her eyes busy in the dock-crowd and around the scenery of the port-city. There were no banners. There were no flower-sellers by the wall. There was no music, nor any sign of particularly high spirits in the faces of those locals moving about near the ship. To the young noble, this didn't look like a town in a kingdom in celebration. Granted, she was in a foreign place and things, including festivals, were done differently in Le'ranna, but still...
It occurred to Orienne that she and her delegation appeared to be the most festive things in sight.
OOC) Ya, so I might have gotten a little carried away with description, so you'll have to wade through that, sry. But hey, welcome to the noble-plot thread!