Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.1    An Obligated Noble

1.3.1.12 Hidden subtlety

Bulgaria stepped in, to save her from further embarrassment.

Bulgaria: “Your House does seem to attract very skilled retainers, if the reputation of your ship captains and traders is anything to go by. Your district and the direct enterprises of your own House are so large and diverse, you can’t possibly do it all in person or by relying upon training the offspring of existing retainers. How do you go about recruiting new people and expanding your organisations?”

She’d asked Bulgaria to look into recruiting more people in arlife to aid the Wombles in their projects, and was relieved to see he’d been thinking about it.

Claudio: “It helps to have a reputation as a good place to work, that is picky about the quality of people it employs. Those who are both competent and ambitious will seek you out, and it becomes more a matter of deciding which applicants are a poor fit, either because they don’t have enough to offer you, or because you can’t provide them with the training and opportunities that will help them make the most of themselves. It has to go both ways.”

Camillo: “Lord Claudio has a well deserved reputation, not just for integrity and also for subtlety. He provides people with opportunities to reveal their true nature and intentions, and will have interviews conducted with those who knew the applicant in their younger and less guarded days.”

The plates were cleared and the next course was brought in, to be placed upon a sturdy table of its own where a team of chefs opened it up and started carving. The lead chef bowed to Lady Sienna and announced: “Young Lampeian Mountain Boar, stuffed with Swan Royale, stuffed with Magusan Lamb, stuffed with Sonourous Quail.”

The boar was much larger than piglets were in arlife, and covered in a brown shaggy hide that looked suitable for protecting against the rocks and cold of a mountain environment.

Claudio: “When interviewing in person, you can learn a lot about a person by playing music together, or by letting them pick a gift and then seeing what use they make of it. But you’re right - I can’t do it all myself, especially when it comes to recruiting in areas I’m not an expert. There are only a few pieces of advice I can offer, many of them passed down to me by my ancestors. Someone who is highly skilled in a particular area won’t always be good at passing on that skill, or at spotting when a candidate is a poor fit for your organisation. But someone who is mediocre in their area almost invariably hires people who are even worse than they are. If you want to preserve a high quality of employee as your organisation expands, be generous in how you compensate your managers for the success of their hires and don’t force them to rush to fill their roster with whatever they can lay their hands upon.”

Tori: “True words. I’ve come across several of the condottiero, the northern mercenary companies that get hired by towns on a long term basis as garrisons or patrol their borders, which have degraded over time because the captain has let hiring standards slip, recruiting anyone whose level is high enough, rather than worrying about how well they’ll fight as part of a team or how they’ll behave with civilians. Once a company gets a reputation for not looking after new fighters until they’ve proven their worth by surviving the first year, promising recruits stop applying and that’s hard to recover from. A good company needs more than melee fighters.”

Tomsk: “What do they need? What’s life like in a good company? How do they go about hiring and training?”

Tori tore into a swan drumstick with her teeth, holding it in one hand and occasionally waving it around to make a point, unlike her mother who was carefully carving small bite-sized pieces off and eating them with roast vegetables upon her fork.

Tori: “If you’re talking about a small group out on patrol, the most important thing is avoiding being killed by forces who are stronger than you are. So you need to get information about them, before they get it about you. You need the knowledge and experience to evaluate that information correctly and if you get it wrong you absolutely have to be able to break contact - slow them down or divert them, then move faster and hide better. Your scout needs to be fast and stealthy, but so do all the other members of the patrol - no matter how good they are at magic or fighting. I’d take a hunter who can spot traps and get on well with neutral forces, a tamer with a hawk, or a mage who can listen to the wind, over a combat specialist every time. Information is key.”

Everyone paid attention to Tori, except Lady Pia and Lady Sienna, who were caught up in a story that Bulgaria was telling them. Kafana found her eyes watching the drumstick as it swayed.

Tori: “At company level, you have to think about logistics, morale, maintaining equipment, preparing defences, training recruits and maintaining a relationship with the community. Mind magic can be very useful, reinforcement and healing are vital, and high level reality magic is beyond price (and so usually unavailable).”

Camillo: “If someone can create a personal storage space, or build strong walls, they can earn far more money working for a merchant, and with far lower risk.”

Her Cook’s intuition was telling her something about the drumstick. Not poison, surely? She briefly switched Truesight back on and focused upon the food, willing System to narrow down on just the cooking aspects.

Alderney: “What about crafters?”

Tori: “All the big companies have people who can repair weapons and armour, and a quartermaster with magesight who can evaluate loot. Different companies tend to have a different expertise they are well known for. The Company of the Star specialises in magic. The Bright Helms are defensive specialists. The Company of the Pink Rose has nobles from several regions, and often handles tricky international diplomatic situations. I’m with The Hammers, who specialise in moving fast through danger zones. We often get called upon to patrol an area when people go missing due to a new monster that the locals can’t find or identify.”

The drumstick bone and the meat upon it didn’t match! She looked down at the quail on her own plate, and saw that it too had been magically reshaped, to appear as though it had come from a smaller bird than it actually had.

Bungo: “That sounds pretty varied. How do you train for that?”

Tori: “It is. When the same group of people have worked together as a patrol for months on end, they start to develop group skills that let them carry out combat moves that are so closely coordinated, down to the width of a hair or a fraction of a second, that they appear to be driven by a single consciousness. Such moves can be spectacularly effective and hard to oppose, when used at the right time, but they’re also dangerous - an individual taking part in an offensive group move may expose herself completely, without thought of blocking or dodging. So a large part of training isn’t just focused upon individual skills - it is upon teaching pre-approved group skills that are not suicidally flawed. They want to be able to swap people into a patrol to replace an injured or absent member, and have the tenente in charge of several groups know in advance what they can do, and when to call upon them to do it.”

Bungo: “I’d be really interested in learning more about that. Captain Lelio has shown me some of the ones the watch uses, but I imagine the companies have a far wider range. Is there a book?”

Tori said, with much satisfaction: “Nope! None of the companies wants an enemy to learn the precise details and work out an exact counter. The only way to learn is in person, from someone who trusts you. Some condottiero will try to spy upon their competitor’s practice sessions, but stealth is hard if the target is alert - trickery works better.”

She proceeded to regale them with an improbable tale of intrigue between mercenary companies, involving two sergeants disguised as exotic dancers, until the desert course arrived.

Disguises! That was it. She leaned over to Claudio, and whispered with a satisfied voice: “Claudio - why is the swan disguised as quail, while the quail is disguised as swan?”

He whispered back: “It is a tradition that chefs at banquets show off their skill in subtle ways. The game helps the host know which guests are sozzled, and which are sharp and paying attention.”

Alderney and Bulgaria would both have heard the whisper, though Bulgaria wasn’t letting on that he knew. As hostess, Lady Sienna would have known already. Who else knew? She looked around the table. She looked at Tori, still waving that same damn drumstick.

Hang on. Why had she been waving it around for so long, and so obviously? Had Tori been giving the Wombles a clue? She made eye contact with Kafana, and used the drumstick to give her a brief salute, still grinning, and then continued with her description of the two sergeants being pressured into dancing and kissing each other around a blazing campfire, in front of a full camp of watching mercenaries, in order to maintain a disguise that had actually already been seen through.

Kafana: “Claudio - is the boar genuine? The meat is tender, but if that’s really a young one, the adults must be nearly as tall as a man.”

Claudio: “Play with the symbol of my own house? Never. And yes, the Lampeian Mountain Boar really is that large. The exiles who founded Nuovilion brought the boars with them, when they left the Hellenic region to flee the Transylvanian incursion. Apparently the exiles used them as mounts, though they are totally wild now. Excellent climbers, and very dangerous when charging, but they’re not aggressive unless you do something to offend them - then watch out!”