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his eyes dimmed when the bodies were returned; he became withdrawn and anxious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.