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Savelin Chantling took him on all sorts of great traveling escapades. They went to the peaks of mountains; to strange cities filled with massive, squat metal boxes and beeping monstrosities with wheels; to idyllic beaches; to an island that seemed to have been carved out of one single piece of obsidian; to a swamp that the chantling said, with absolute confidence 'I could do better magic-work here than was done.' They came home, he noticed, when the chantling became too tired to manage the spell - usually not long at all - and they never went to the same place twice.
Barthom was not sure what to do about this. He knew with confidence it was not to be reported, if he could avoid it. Obviously His Radiancy's auditors, who came to collect his reports about the chantling, did not ask, so he said nothing. He did not even write it down.
For this adventure they went to a beautiful ocean city - the Vangavaye-ve, on Zunidh of the Wide Seas, Barthom was pretty confident. In front of them was a three-story house, in which the chantling went into, and he followed.
Inside there was a kitchen, and in the back of the kitchen was a hallway and some steps, and Barthom could hear someone talking upstairs. In the kitchen itself were two older men. One, of Voonran descent, was furiously whipping something in a bowl and, somewhat alarmingly, muttering a list of fairly gruesome things he was going to do to his creation. A spattering of what Barthom guessed to be flour covered his olive-green tunic, and there were a variety of baking-things laid out on the counter behind him. The other man was significantly broader, common but unrecognizable in heritage, and reading a newspaper the top proclaimed as the Ring o' News. At their appearance, both men looked up with the sharpness and attentiveness that reminded Barthom of His Radiancy's army.
"Hello," said the man at the table, "Do you want some coffee?" That was not something any of His Radiancy's auditors had ever said to him, and certainly not kindly.
"May we have some coffee, Master Tutor?" The chantling asked him.
"I don't see why not," Barthom said, which was his favorite answer to give on these adventures.
This seemingly-innocuous interaction caused the broader man to glance between them once and twice more. The man then looked up at the baker, and they shared some moment of silent communication. Barthom did not think them husbands, but they both clearly lived here and knew each other well enough for such a look. He was pretty sure the baker was of noble blood, if only from how he held himself, and thus baking was his hobby -- he did not know, exactly, how the Vangavaye-ve interacted with the Upper Ten Thousand Families, and what a Voonran noble was doing here, or --
"Have a seat," the man at the table said, gesturing. There were four matched chairs at the table, and then several more folded against the wall. The baker stepped aside to allow space for his fellow resident to pour coffee with the familiarity of this action having been done many, many times before.
The chantling picked a seat, and Barthom sat next to him. The Voonran man put the bowl down and began to look through the pantry, and then, sighing, closed the pantry door.
"No more taro starch," the baker said, mostly to Barthom and the chantling, and added, "Let me check upstairs," before disappearing up the steps on the other side of the kitchen.
"How do you like your coffee, Master Tutor?" the remaining man asked. He was already preparing a cup, perhaps for himself.
"A little cream, please."
"I hope coconut cream is good enough."
Barthom was trying not to smile at the absolute absurdity of this adventure. It was much better than the variety of caves and forests they had gone to. "That will be suitable."
The man put down all three cups. Barthom noticed the man had not asked how the chantling liked his coffee. He was trying to decide what question to ask first: the man's name, or the fact that he was clearly not perturbed at all by the two of them appearing, or what the Voonran had been baking, or what sort of things were happening according to the Ring o' News.
Before he could decide, the chantling spoke. "This coffee is wonderful. How did you prepare it?"
"A little coconut cream and a little sugar."
"I am always going to have my coffee this way," the chantling said, "thank you."
"You are very welcome."
They drank their extremely delicious coffee. During that, a man - a new man - came down the steps. Barthom found his whole body automatically going to the floor for an obeisance. The man was tall, with imperial-black skin and golden eyes, and the nose, and despite his strange clothing there was no mistaking him for anything other than a member of the Imperial family.
"Don't!" said this... Imperial... cousin? .. in a strangled voice. Barthom froze, half out of the chair. Then, drawing himself together with perfectly regal calm, the cousin asked him, “Will you come to my study?”
“Of course, my lord,” Barthom said, standing. He looked at the chantling and gestured him to follow.
The cousin brought them up many steps to a beautiful and terribly messy solarium with many glass features hanging from the ceiling.
“Touch anything you want,” the cousin said to the chantling, who immediately darted to a pile of trinkets.
This matter seemingly resolved, the cousin went to a beautiful desk and took something from it. Barthom had never felt so wrong-footed in one of this adventures in his life. He stared at the cousin’s back and tried to figure out how it was possible there could be an Imperial cousin - a lion-eyed Imperial cousin, another one, not his chantling - that His Radiancy had done nothing about. His Radiancy did not have much interest in the far islands of the Wide Seas, but Barthom could not figure out why His Radiancy's approach to the chantling would not have been replicated.
The cousin walked over to him, took his hand, unfolded his fingers, and in his open palm planted a beautiful ring carved of dark wood with a band of obsidian in it. Then, staring at their combined hands, he folded Barthom's fingers over the ring. Barthom noticed how his hand shook. There was a strange pause, and Barthom felt the hum in the air that reminded him, oddly, of the chantling's magic, right before they were off on some adventure. “There will come a time,” the cousin said to him, with a hypnotic sort of focus and intensity that Barthom could not help but stare back, “That His Radiancy’s forces will come to take your chantling from you. They will also ask you to come with them. Do not go with them. Do not go with them. Do not go with them.”
Of course there were treasonous whispers of madness in the Royal Family, but none of the madness muttered about ever looked like this. Tears ran freely from the lion-eyes, yes, and this proclamation made no sense, but the cousin's voice did not waver. “Keep this ring with you at all times. When they ask you to go with them, put it on instead. I will find and rescue you.”
“Yes, my lord,” Barthom said, because, what else did you say, when told something like that, by …...this person, and in a place so strange?
“Repeat what I have said," the cousin said, firmly, and what else was there in his voice - pleading?
It was essentially an order, from a member of the Imperial family, but more important than that he could do nothing but feel like this strange cousin wanted nothing more than to help him. He gave the cousin a firm nod. “When my service is finished to His Radiancy and I am to give the chantling back, I will be asked to go with His Radiancy’s guards. I will put on this ring instead."
“Yes,” the cousin said, and smiled through his tears. The cousin looked him up and down with what Barthom felt like, was, for some even more confusing reason, familiarity. “Thank you. Thank you. Your chantling cares so much about you and you are a wonderful tutor. Thank you for everything you provided to m-him.” This strangeness apparently concluded, the cousin released his hand to take a step back and just stare at him. Barthom was not accustomed to such... interest, but he was not going to express that.
Before he could configure his thoughts into some order, he felt the peculiar twisting in his chest that meant the chantling’s magic was fading. “How have you escaped His Radiancy?” he asked, because there were so many questions, but not enough time for any of them, and that one was the first that came to his mouth. Oh, Pensbel, he thought, feeling foolish, Perhaps restrain your treason, even where-ever this was, next time.
“My tutor protected me,” the cousin said, immediately, oddly shy and Barthom's bafflement seemed to solidify into clarity and he stared into those gold eyes and then back at the chantling and then back at not the cousin but -----
They were in his study.
“Oh no,” the chantling said, mournfully, opening his hand to reveal a tiny shell, “I think I may have taken something from the house.”
“Keep it with you,” Barthom said, putting the ring in his pocket and keeping any hint of the great typhoons of his thoughts from his face, “You might be able to return it to them, one day.”