Avarice

[Silver Snow]

Trade in Selgaunt did not die when the sun set. Coin changed hands and greed flowered under Selune just as much as during the day. Treachery and intrigue was spoken of from dawn till dusk, but rarely was it ever acted upon in daylight hours. The Scepters patrolled the cobbled streets all the more vigorously, but their concentrations were greater in certain parts of town, those wealthiest squares of manors and homes a stone's throw from where the true money was made. The city's merchant council all held fashionable estates in the city, and even more sprawling and opulent ones scattered outside of it.
One such home stood parted from the rest.
It stood at a corner where little traffic went, it stood tall and dark-stoned with every indication that it did not start merely where the ground did. It stood as a reminder that the arcane played as great a role in the city's rule as it did in the city's shadows. The edifice resembled that of a wizard's tower, and somewhere in the upper tiers a mage's light lit a room, a desk, and a man behind it. The ink had pooled beside the page yet untouched by the quill, the tip tapping on the varnished surface. The hand holding it was long-fingered but strong, the man it belonging to a tall and imperious presence in the city's merchant council. But here he sat slouched and indecisive, frayed and haggard. His dark eyes were framed by greying blond hair, and stared at the page of the journal he could not commit to. Milavar Kasun, wizard and merchant lord, held a journal that might be his damning a dozen times over..but this entry was the one he struggled to start most.
A few deeper blotches formed in the journal, perhaps bleeding into the next page, before the writing started. It held more haste, more tension, more anger perhaps. It held less certainty that any other page in the journal up to this point.

I could write of her for pages and pages, and elsewhere I already had in the most clinical of senses. I wrote of her as I would the notes to a spell's development. I wrote of her as an asset and investment gathering dust in some bank. I underestimated her. This girl I've raised for her wit had outwitted me, the edge on her I honed had cut me.
Four years ago, at the age of nineteen, she had fled and left men dead behind her. She had taken her youngest sister from me as well, a child sixteen years of age by the name of Danica. I did not even think Ava cared a damn for the girl that never exhibited the sort of talents she herself did, as Danica just broke and stayed that way, but steal her she did. Did she take her just to spite me? Did she care for her after all, behind my back? It angers me still, but I have come to a realization I cannot hide from myself: she is her father's daughter, and in my own way I think I love her for it. Avarice was nowhere near my first sin, but my first mistake in many years.
She had evaded me for four winters, but now I have found sign of her. She had lived in Suzail and flourished, but she was there no longer for reasons I don't yet know. I had lost her trail again, but not for so long this time. I have learned enough to be on her heels.
She is a self-styled bardess now, and goes by the name of Abigail Beaumont..but Avarice is what I had named her, and it was as prophetic a name as I could have ever hoped.

- Milavar Kasun, Councilman of Selgaunt