>>5411977>>5412007>>5412137>>5412151>Rise to Giordano’s challenge and quaff the hot aleYou step boldly into the public house and approach Giordano.
As assuredly as you would take a goblet of wine from a cup bearer at a banquet, you take the steaming mug from the reeve and tip it back. The ale burns your lips and throat but your constitution holds and you do not flinch. It’s unfamiliar, as sour as it smells, and you cannot identify whatever crop it’s based on, or whatever herbs and fruits it might be flavoured with – but it is not unpleasant.
You drain the mug in one and stare down the reeve, his smug smirk replaced with a keen, appraising look. He breaks into a genuine smile and roars his approval, clacking his own mug against yours. The tension in the room breaks. The peasants smile and laugh, some cheer. Conversation resumes and the drinking continues.
Your mettle proven, Giordano is happy to talk. With no hard feelings apparent between the two of you, Claudine follows you into the pub. The mannered old seneschal is evidently out of her preferred environment, but more than willing to join the reeve in giving you an appraisal of Deveché’s situation. Claudine knows the shape of the finances and the overall productivity of the manor, while Giordano knows the gritty details, the technical details of the work, where it excels and where it needs improvement. Overall, the estate is in good order and fair wealth: Dame Lucrezia seldom took more from the treasury than what she needed for her expeditions to the Monument, preferring to barter directly with other lords of the valley using whatever wealth she scavenged from within, leaving Claudine and Giordano to direct most of the profits back into the village and its running.
The reeve quickly reveals himself to be a good fellow. He is completely ignorant of or utterly unconcerned about courtly manners and pleasantries, but he is not overly crude. His little jabs are not reserved for you: now that you have the reeve’s approval, a few more of the locals are willing to be drawn into the conversation when Giordano calls them to elaborate on some recent problem or detail of craft, and evidently the reeve is familiar enough with each of them to lightly lambast them in turn.