Guildmistress

‘How daintily is our Guildmistress appareled this day! Mark you the fair embroidery on her collar, and yon jewelled brooch she wears in it, as broad as the boss of a buckler!’

Six weeks after I’d swum ashore, a full conclave of eight guildmistresses was held aboard a schooner out of Gate of the South; and I confessed in full all over again. This conclave spanned four full days. The guildmistresses were not so much sitting in judgement, but more as a tribunal of enquiry: to delve into all available facts about the other half of our world, facts which might cast a new light on what we thought of as the certainties of our existence.

Alabasel Frond was the guildmistress of the Adventurers Guild, and he had thought that her nickname was whispered only among the town’s youths.