Hessian

Hessian, Lord Argent was the Lord Temporal of House Argent before Emeric, and Emeric and Ashe's father. He was killed in the Rebellion of the Quiet Year, on the same day that Emeric awakened his powers.

The Lord Argent was a quiet man with quiet pleasures. Those who knew him knew to look for him in the greenhouse towards the back of the west wing of Aegiside. Even as a child he squirreled away many afternoons among the shrubs and small trees, and as an adult it remained a safe place for him where he spent much of his time tending to the flowers he grew for his wife and children.

Whether you knew him or not, if you lived in La Vieille it was clear that Hessian liked to hide. But he was never intended to take on the Temporality; his mother, the famously stern Agatha, Lord Argent, neglected him in favor of his older brother Emmon. This seemed like a sensible choice, of course. As a child he showed glimmers of competence: a strong intuition for people’s strengths, the capacity to listen and learn from his mistakes, a mind suited for mathematics and science far better than Emmon. But where Emmon was strong and certain, Hessian was soft-hearted and indecisive; while Emmon was quietly confident, Hessian almost exuded insecurity. Had his qualities been supported, he might have made a fine Lord; but he was left to his own devices instead, and days that could have been spent studying and growing were spent growing the plants instead.

Hessian’s life changed forever when his mother and brother were killed in a mining accident. What light there was in his eyes dimmed when the bodies were returned; he became withdrawn and anxious when the council of Lords needed a show of strength. The one choice he made readily was his choice of a partner. When Agatha was alive, she and Hessian had arranged for him to marry a childhood friend, the daughter of a prominent family in the city; but shortly after her death he reneged on the agreement and instead married Eiya, Privine Giscard. Eiya was clever, gentle and strong, easily a good match for Hessian, but House Giscard had been in financial and social ruin for decades; she brought no alliances with her, and in fact brought the enmity of the House Hessian had spurned.

A series of poor advisors and worse managers left the city increasingly impoverished, and the Lord of the Greenhouse was easy to blame. When their son Emeric was born, Hessian retreated further into the house, caring for Emeric and leaving much of the political work to Eiya, who was politically savvy but lacked the resources or the respect to make any meaningful change. Still, for a time, with Eiya making slow but steady changes and Hessian content to raise their child, it almost seemed like things were looking up.

Then Eiya died giving birth to their daughter.

There is a rumour among the Aegiside housekeepers that Hessian named her Ashe after the ashes of his own life. The rumour is probably not true – ‘A’ and ‘E’ names are common in House Argent – but it was no secret that Hessian saw his life as a ruin after Eiya’s death. He retreated to his greenhouse almost permanently, setting up a small cot in a dark corner to sleep away from the bed he once shared with his wife. In the total absence of anyone from House Argent on the council, La Vieille’s silver mines fell into total disrepair and unrest in the city hit a boiling point.

Three weeks before he was dragged out into the square and killed, Hessian seemed to awaken from his state. He assumed direct command of his portion of the city watch; he sent letters to House Argent’s farming properties outside of the city and requested their aid on behalf of La Vieille; he convened a council of advisors to make a plan to survive what was by then a heated rebellion. One morning he even made pancakes for his children.

When the city watch fell, he gathered his son and daughter in his arms and fled the house himself on foot. They went into hiding in the basement of a small row house near the Canton, where they remained for just over a week. Hessian snuck out of the pile of hay they shared every morning and snuck out into the courtyard, and bleary-eyed, dressed in rags, he took to repairing an old rosebush that had gone unruly. One step at a time, he must have thought as he used an old razor to trim the leaves, even as the thorns cut his fingers. The rebellion stormed into the basement just after he returned from one such trip.

Ashe remembers little of Hessian, Lord of the Greenhouse, other than the fear on his face in the moments before he died. Emeric remembers more: dewy warm mornings spent in the greenhouse, among flowers painted like fire; the smell of pancakes filling the breakfast room; calm hands fixing a mess as a soft, jittery voice explained something in words he didn’t yet understand. He wishes sometimes that he could convey these feelings to Ashe; she understands them in theory, but he feels the gap between them perhaps most acutely when he tries to give her more.

Hessian’s greenhouse, along with most of his books, was lost in the volcanic eruption that destroyed half of Aegiside soon after his death. On restless and painful nights, Emeric sometimes dreams of a greenhouse garden overtaken by lava, the flower petals burned at the edges and encased in rivulets of melted glass laced with fragments of silver.

He can’t remember what it looked like before.