Merrigan Fox

The middle of three Fox siblings, between Natalia and Amanda, and a nephew of Nathan Fox, or a great-nephew; he hedged the degree himself the first time he gave it. What the family has him for is the security of its business. Architecture and engineering are his own interest, and at about sixteen years old it was the interest and not the post that got him the bridge.

The council had funded the repair of the old Mól span south of Loshev, and Merrigan took the work. His eldest sister read that as a boy making a name for himself rather than meeting his responsibilities to the family, said so quietly, and then took half of it back, because the safety of the town was paramount. The cost to the Foxes was real either way. With their own architect on the bridge, the vineyard’s burned processing house had nobody to rebuild it, and the family sent to Peredhel for an architect of its own.

The company came on him at dusk, alone on the bridge behind a table of parchment, going over measurements again. Labor was not needed that day, he told them; he only wanted the numbers right, because nobody wanted to order the wrong stone. He was lodging at his family’s estate. Told that was a fine thing to have, he said they had a few. He introduced himself and put out his hand before anyone could ask him to, having already placed all three of them: their reputations preceded them, and his uncle spoke very well of them. When Aldo told him that what he had just heard should go to his uncle and to nobody else, so that it would travel to Nathan, it took him a moment. That was his age and not his wits. Then he said he would be sure to tell him, and added that the man had other matters in hand at present.

He gave over the town’s news willingly. Raiders had been going into people’s estates and taking what they held to be theirs. Two of them had been cornered by seven or eight guards, most of the town’s strength, and it was the guards who were outmatched: he had not known there was enough gauze in Loshev to bandage the wounds. The blows had been decisive and were placed so as not to kill, and he would not say whether that was fortune or precision. Nobody had died of them yet. One of the raiders had come back down with a wagon, collected goods and taken them north, and the rest had gone south, where he doubted the same tactics would serve them in a more populous place. He had more important matters in hand himself, he said, and hoped they did not come back. There was more of the giant bird about, up in the sky and rather majestic, and wyverns besides: a trader’s horse taken off its tether in the night, and the wagon it should have pulled ransacked by others while he was away finding another. Merrigan had sworn he saw a wyvern once himself, and the story corroborated him, so it must be true. On the way out Aldo called him Melvin. He straightened.