It’s less of a guild hall but more so a hotel.
Actually, this was the luxury hotel of Port Azuru.
The Concordia House sits in its humble three stories in the northern side of town, its white-washed walls dirtied, its once bone-ceramic coloring softened by the ever flow of time. Lavishly black Adranic timber beams give the structure the look of some well-kept ancestral home rather than its actuality of a luxury hotel, with its gently sloping roof holding a few missing shingles and splotches of stray moss. A single painted sign board, aged in wood, bears the name of the establishment in that geometric Tianci script with a smaller Ensolian translation beneath it (thank the Goddess): Concordia House.
Sophia narrows her eyes at the sheer decrepitude of the place before turning to Zai. “What is this place?”
“It’s the most expensive hotel to rent in Port Azuru. It also doubles as the Azure Hospitality Syndicate’s administrative center, if you can call it that.”
“I know that, but what sorta peasant would ever stay here?” The Fourth Princess argues. “This is…”
She can’t say that it’s so bad.
She can’t say that its size was nothing compared to Hautwarden’s mountain resorts, which sprawled across sections of its slopes and high-altitude sanitariums. She can’t say that its condition was decrepit when put against the meticulously cleaned motels on the Erythryn Coast, whose staff seemed to be capable of finding the smallest stain upon their tile floors. And perhaps worst of all, its entire chimeric amalgamation of Central Ensolian, Karli, Amorian and Tianci architecture was even more abhorrent than a Capital Valley art installation.
Sophia Elise the Eighth bites her tongue to stay quiet, and instead lets her husband take the lead into the building.
No doormen, no towering signages or any sort of staff visible from the front. Instead, a pair of simple wooden doors, lacquered deep brown and fitted with brass handles worn down to a soft gleam, stood open in some strange invitation to what was only a handful of guests.
There is a plan, or at least whatever kind of plan Zai could come up with on the short drive over here.
And Sophia stands behind him, hands carefully intertwined as she just observes this mastercraft in the humanity of politics.
There were several schools of politics thought developed on the Ensolian continent; the once disparate Kingdoms of the Ensolian Belt, to the warlords of the Karlian Hegemony, the Tianci’s triple regional conflicts, and even the northern Kingdoms’ own battles providing a rich field of real, living examples from where historians and modern analysts alike could harvest from.
And Sophia Elise the Eighth, as one of the heirs of the Silver Throne; as a possible Empress (Goddess forbid), had Every. Single. School. Drilled into her head over the course of her teenage years.
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Power and people. Was the mantra from mother, during one of the days where she took a vacation from court to sit in to one of Sophia’s tutoring sessions (she, in the embarrassment of her children, was practically lecturing the teacher as well). Power comes from history and reputation, from your armies and economics, but perhaps most importantly power comes from your people. Without People you have no history, you have no reputation, your armies will not march and your economies will not run. To play politics, you must first play the people. Without people, there is no politics. Without people there will be no nation.
Without the power of the people, an Emperor is nothing.
The Fourth Princess’ internal monologue is shocked at that retrieval of information, at the near perfect recall of that memory.
What, I’m a smart person. Sophia scowls to herself. I remember things!
Sure you do, but can you do it as well as your husband does it?
And as she watches this specimen of human politics she understands, her body in almost hallowed silence at this demonstration of the lies, of the stories, of the connections made between the small words and jokes exchanged between Zai Tianci and this increasingly escalating series of authority figures within this guild’s chain of command.
Casually speaking to this receptionist through the mutual friend of that clumsy, barrel headed owner of Seaside Books, finding common ground through vectors of entertainment and short changing barely sellable stories.
A more serious tone as he reaches that short but frustrated shift manager, who despite her seeming lack of customers still works and talks as if she was managing a bustling and understaffed eatery in the heart of Capital’s restaurant avenue.
And Zai so effortlessly cuts her down with that calm, slow tone of his. But that smile, with his teeth and his lips extended out to his cheeks; holds something so terrifying even Sophia couldn’t place.
You’ve never seen him smile like that before. Her consciousness committee reads him. That smile is something that he’s never shown you in your months together. That smile is a mask placed upon the face of your husband, something you are not allowed to see.
Sophia looks at him, and then back to herself. What does it mean? Why is he smiling, why is he so happy in that way?
And her internal monologue, alongside the unanimous standing thoughts of the Central Consciousness Committee give her this answer brought from two decades of royalty, wrought out from an education focused purely on ruling through the soul and the people of it; this was the power of the political weapon, unleashed by the Silver Throne upon this nation to conquer, to kill, to destroy it from within:
We have no idea what that expression means.
Sophia just sits in silence, internally screaming at herself. What do you mean we have no idea?!
We just have no idea! They all scramble back. We were never good at reading these silly emotions. Other people are just weird, like come on what do you expect from us?! We’re you!
Sophia Elise wants to actually cry, but remains steady as she just watches Zai move this conversation forward with slow, deliberate understanding.
Goddess damned he was so good at it too.
