The Silver Key Freehold

I had already taken the Freehold Oath but when the four rulers slipped out of the oath giving room and left me alone to contemplate my first Freehold membership. Just being out of the Hedge and out of Arcadia had been mind blowing enough, but now to be a member of a Freehold that had been established since the early fifties and thrived without extreme threat from the Gentry, was inconceivable. 
I noticed after a while that I was being watched by a beautiful young woman with large bright eyes the color of an iceberg, pure and clean. She smiled softly, tenderly even, at me and came over to sit next to me. She twisted the cap off of a soda and passed it to me before lighting a cigarette and leaning back. 
"I've been where you are sweetheart. When I first got here, I'd just fallen out of the Hedge. Hit my head on The Anvil's bumper. Knocked me unconscious. Woke up in his office two hours later surrounded by Silver Guard and not knowing a single person to turn for help." She smiled over to me after watching a few curls of smoke disappear into the vaulted ceiling. "My name's Justine." 
I took the extended hand and smiled sheepishly back to her. "Stella." 
"Well Stella, it doesn't get any easier. Things here at the Silver Key are confusing sometimes. The Four Tops....er.....well the leaders of the four courts in the Freehold, are constantly jockeying for more power. The legal faction, the Council of Mercy, is constantly jockeying to control them more. The Sage is constantly trying to weasel out more pay offs. The Norns, the enforcers of the laws, are always lurking and skulking about. It can be a mine field if you don't know where to step." 
She leaned against me with a little nudge as my face fell and I began to think that taking my pledge was a bad idea. 
"Don't worry. I'll help you. Look it's really simple if you start from the start. You just took the first step. Now you have to read the laws." She rose and pulled me up by the scaled hand to follow her into the main sitting room. There, on the wall were four frames. Each frame was carved cold iron, at each corner was the arms of each court. The first was the wording of the oath I had just taken, woven into an intricate tapestry showing four people, two men and two women, each emerging from a sunrise regally cloaked in the mantle of their courts. 
I stared up at the first, my eyes tracing the letters that were woven in a shimmering gold in the clouds of the sky. The workmanship of the tapestries was breath taking and as I moved the sunrise behind the figures seemed to flash brighter for but a moment. Justine smiled softly to me. "Excellent work hmm? It was a gift from the Norns. I believe they wove the tapestries themselves. And each tells a story, though one can only speculate as to whether or not the story is true." 
She grinned up at me and moved to the second. This second one showed all four again, this time though each was in their own box, each fought a separate creature. In some of the boxes the creatures looked more man than creature, in others they looked more creature than man. Behind each foe was a pillar with something on top. As I leaned closer all four items flashed brightly and I was forced to step backwards, shielding my eyes. No matter how I gazed at the tapestry, I could not get a good look at the item on the pillars. Justine put a cautioning hand on my shoulder. 
"Don't blind yourself hun." She looked up at the tapestry. " This is the list of Freehold laws. This is ever changing. I don't know how the Norns do it though. When the Council of Mercy, I'll get to that in a moment, convenes and alters a law or passes a new one, the tapestry disappears for a few hours. No one sees it leave or who takes it. About an hour or so later, it reappears. And as if it was always meant to be there, the new law has been woven in." 
She waved a hand a bit and smirked. "The Council of Mercy is like Parliament. In the tenth year of the Silver Key the rulers were fighting amongst themselves a lot. Laws were changing from season to season. What The Transcendent Harrower of Days would not allow, Our Gracious Lady of the Reborn Desert Dreams would require. Members of the Silver Key were so confused by the changing laws that many were too afraid to even come to the Freehold for fear they'd inadvertently break a law. So the motleys came together and upon the day when their Oath would be renewed the entire freehold refused to do so unless the Rulers brought to bare a judiciary body in which each had representation and a body in which the laws could be regulated. Facing down being rulers of a personless Freehold, the yielded to the freehold's wishes. 
"The Council of Mercy is made up of the four rulers, their viziers and the leaders of each of the motleys. The Norns are not allowed a seat normally. The Sage rarely sits at the Council's hearings unless a Maxim has been broken, but the Sage does hold a seat. The Council sits as both a house of legislation as well as a persecution hall. Should the laws or the Maxim's be violated the case is heard before the seated members. 
"The members are protected from reprisal by magic. Each are cloaked and masked so that their identities are hidden. And whenever a voice is raised from the dais where the members sit, it is twisted and sculpted to fit the voice of the current ruler. In this way a person may be tried by a jury of his peers without his peers fearing his motley attacking him for rending a fair decision." 
She looked back up to the tapestry. "I only know a few of the reasons behind the laws. But I'll tell you what I know. " 
I sat down, thinking this was going to take forever. Already my head was swimming deeper and faster than I could ever imagine myself swimming. 
"The first law was easy to find out about. Unlike with most Freeholds, our great seasonal Courts are a political force of their own. In the beginning it was not like this, but it became such after the Council of Mercy was formed. The Rulers had problems with members of their court, emboldened by the resistance of the previous years, disobeying their orders. Unable to bring new laws to the Freehold, the Council of Mercy was plied to enact this one. Now that it has though, the courts of Las Vegas have become the most unified courts I have ever seen. The benefits imparted on each of their members alone warrants joining one and swearing their secret court oath. They say in the Spring Court that members are allowed the unhindered access to special brothels that Our Gracious Lady of the Reborn Desert Dreams has set up in the Hedge. Brothels that are not just for sexual pleasures. They are said to be able to cater to any desire the member may or may not have." 
She smirked up at me, as if she was hinting I might already have secret desires. I huffed and hid my face in my webbed hands. 
"The others are sort of self explanatory given the nature of the Freehold." She seemed uneasy now that a tall ungainly looking man had shambled into the room and was glaring at her. I looked over to him and he scowled at me. Justine seemed to wilt under the gaze. "I'll tell you of the Stars another time. Let's move on." 
Her hands were positively shaking and I was suspicious of the man that was now watching us closely as we moved to the third framed tapestry. This one was a portrait of the four rulers that had sworn me in, each portrait was set upon bare threads. As if the faces were woven free of the rest of the tapestries. The letters were raised slightly higher than the details of the faces and the baren back threads shimmered like caught moonlight. 
"The strings of the Norns are pretty simple. They are the laws you will find in most places. Except the last one. It seems shortly after the Norns appeared, The Transcendent Harrower of Days had a lover that was caught selling members of the Freehold back to the Gentry in an attempt to free her, the Autumn Queen's that is, sister from her Keeper. It was supposed to be a proposal gift. He was insane of course, driven mad by the loving touch of the Autumn Queen it is said. In a rare state of mercy, the Queen rose from her throne in right before the Norns fell upon the man and stilled them. She stepped in front of her beloved and told the Norns that should they strike him a single blow, they would cut her heart from her breast first for her heart was the true perpetrator of this crime. They stood there, in a state of eerie confusion as they watched the Queen take a knife from her dress and begin slicing at her chest. The death of a ruler during her reign would be catastrophic to the unity of the Freehold, at the Norns knew it. 
"Two of them spoke and from what I've been told, to hear their voices is to hear the symphony of one's own mortality. They spoke these words, 'Now and forever more, we shall watch. Now and forever more, we shall bring the ravens. Only the silver crown may banish Hell's claim upon her cousins, now and forever more.' I have no clue what that means but a few of us have been working on figuring out exactly what they meant. We do know that the next day that last string was curled into words upon that tapestry." 
She cast the man a glance and fidgeted with the hem of her dress. She moved on and looked up at the final panel of the quad of tapestries. It showed four hearts, perfect down to the small anatomically correct capillaries, interlaced with the aortas leading into each other. Each was branded with a symbol that I could not make out. Over this were the Maxims of the Sage. 
"The Maxims of the Sage are similar to the other rules. These are the rules the Sage of the Freehold over looks. The Sage is a sort of...........well I don't know what to liken the Sage to. They keep track of memberships, deaths, laws being violated, judgments of the Council. And they directly oversee things like territory claims and duels. Sort of like an Archivist if you wish." She looked up at the tapestry again after casting the man that was now reading a newspaper, a glance. "All of them are pretty self explanatory. I've yet to figure out number four though. I don't know how to swim so I have no chance to violate it, but it's curious compared to the others. No one I know has been bold enough to defy it. If you figure it out, you'll tell me ... right?" 
Her look was almost conspiratorial, as if she was begging me to look into it. 
"And what court are you, Justine?" I asked her after she was finished explaining all the laws to me. My brain was stuffed full of knowledge, near to brimming and overflowing. 
She laughed a little, a soft almost chirping sound as she led me away from the awkward glaring man. She led me out onto the back balcony of the Freehold and leaned against a pillar. "I'm what's called a Courtless. The changelings that don't fit in to any of the courts. Aren't particularly predisposed to one section or another of the seasonal bond. There's down sides to being Courtless....a lot of them. But I'd rather not swear oath to something with which I have no true connect, yanno?" 
I nodded, even though I didn't actually know. "What's that like? I mean it sounds like all the Courts are pretty tight knit. Is it hard to make friends?" 
"No, not really actually. While the courts are tight knit on their politics, they know the benefit of having unbiased friends. I get what I need to get, and what I can't get I barter for. The Autumn Court is particularly lenient towards me since I have information that they don't have. And they can't stand it when someone has interesting information on their favorite subjects that they just cannot touch." She grinned wickedly over her shoulder to me. 
"So how does one pick a court?" 
"That's not as easy as it sounds really. My advice? Go see each of the rulers. Talk to them about their courts, learn what you can. And if none of them strike a cord, stay courtless. I can always use good voices in the battle for the Courtless." 
I tilted my head and cocked a brow, curious as to what she meant. 
"Well you see Stella...I want the Courtless to have the same rights and structure as the great Courts do. There's a place for us in the Seasonal transition. It's called the Solstice. The time between the seasons is our time. Sure it's not the grandest, nor the longest of times to rule, but it is our place none the less. We deserve a place on the Council of Mercy, we deserve our time to rule just like the others do." She sighed softly and ran a hand through her hair. "But I need people to do it. We need people to get together and work on building what the other courts already have. We don't have anything yet. Just me and one other who never comes to the Freehold any more. He ....." She hesitated, and I could tell she wasn't going to tell me about this mysterious other person. 
"Anyway Stella, you go talk to the rulers, find out if any of the courts fits who you are. If they don't...you come back and talk to me." 
She gave me addresses, names and what to look for for all of the rulers. And I was sent off to learn about the new world I'd been born into. 
exteriors_5025ext1.jpg|The Great Entrance
interiors_5025stairs1.jpg|The Great Seasonal Tree
floorplans_5025lower_f.gif|The lower floors of the Freehold
floorplans_50251_f.gif|The main commons floor
floorplans_50252_f.gif|Restricted Area, second floor - the Monarchs Apartments
floorplans_50253_f.gif|The Top Floor, Restricted - the current seated Monarch resides here
Alpha_Omega_Sacred_Heart_tatto_by_ritchy_tyler_lewis.jpg|The Sigil of the Silver Key Freehold
The Laws of the Silver Key
The Great Courts of The Silver Key 
The Hobgoblin Army
Freehold Establishments