Quoted By:
THREE YEARS EARLIER
Neutral Skies, somewhere above Hadrian's Sea
You are Freiherrin Clarissa zu Engels-Halsgaard, and you are bored out of your mind.
Alejandro was a naturally charming man, and you didn't mind spending time with him. The problem was the sycophants surrounding him, jostling for his attention.Unfortunately, this meant that there was nobody to stop him when he went on one of his long tirades about the vagaries of trade routes going over the Central East. The yes-men around him, consisting of minor nobility or spoiled merchant sons, ate it all up, hoping they would be next in line for a profitable secret or a trade tip.
One disadvantage of being on an airship was that there was nowhere to escape from a boring conversation.
Normally, conversations such as these would be conducted somewhere inside the smoking room, where gentlemen could talk about Important Matters all they wanted without those [i:lit]pesky women[/i:lit] to bother them. The ladies would, meanwhile, withdraw to the salon to prattle on about ineffectual things such as fashion or societal gossip.
Nothing was further from the truth. You had listened in on the gents' conversations in smoking rooms multiple times. (Walls can be incredibly thin if one knows where to put their ear, perhaps aided by an inconspicuously placed listening trumpet.) In your not at all scarce experience, smoking room talk was boring as all hells. It was all about grandiose ideas, social movements and politicks, and nothing of any real consequence whatsoever.
