Ch. 54: Gryvus (2)

They slept through most of their first day at Gryvus. The mansion that they were given for their stay in the city was rather small compared to a noble's mansion at Uriah, but still larger than any commoner's home. It was actually far too big for just the two of them.

"Come on. Wake up, Rosy. We should tour Gryvus and learn a bit more about its culture before we meet with the gryphon elders." Adrian shook Rosy's shoulder. Naturally, after all they'd been through, sleeping in the same bed was a habit that neither of the duo was willing to break. It wasn't a sexual thing, but rather a self-defense thing. Adrian wasn't capable of thwarting assassinations in his sleep, after all. 

Interestingly enough, Rosy didn't reflexively attack Adrian when he tried to shake her awake anymore, either. Their bond apparently completely negated her reflexes as far as he was concerned. That made it a nightmare for him to wake her up, because she now slept like the dead around him, with how resistant she was to his attempts now.

"Get up... come on!" He shook her again, but all he managed to do was make her bedhead worse. Finally, he just pulled the sheets right off of her body and picked her up in a princess carry. She  still didn't respond, so he finally flicked her on the forehead.

"Adrian...? Whaa..." She didn't respond enthusiastically at all, but she did finally wake up. "Why aren't I in bed anymore?" She asked sleepily.

"Because you sleep like a log when we're alone." Adrian retorted.

"So?"

"So, I want to tour Gryvus before we meet with the gryphon elders. The more we learn about their culture, the better position we'll be in when it comes to the negotiations." Adrian told her.

"I don't get why. Their culture isn't going to change the fact that they'll get slaughtered the moment that someone finds an easier way past the first mountain." Rosy argued.

"You said it yourself, Rosy. These people are proud. They believe that their honor is everything, that they're better than anyone down below." Adrian reminded her,

"Yeah, but it doesn't change the fact that I could kill them all in my sleep. Isn't that all the negotiation power we need?" She asked. Unlike Adrian, Rosy hadn't been taught anything about politics. She was just a weapon, as far as her father was concerned. Her father wasn't even pretending to groom her to become the next monarch of Noctus, but a blade for the kingdom instead. All she needed to know was how to kill.

But Adrian hadn't been taught how to fight on the same level that Rosy was. He'd been taught politics instead. And the first rule of politics was to understand the other party before you attempted any sort of negotiations. Not understanding them was the first step towards failure.

"Some negotiations don't rely on physical power, Rosy. Your physical might's meant to slash through obstacles, but you can't do it blindly, or you'll eventually miss something important along the way." He told her.

"I'm not a politically inclined person, Adrian. All I know, is that if we fail, Gryvus is going to disappear. As is Uriah, and every other place that happens to be safe from my father's clutches. He'll destroy it all. If you think that learning more about these gryphons is going to be useful later on... I'll trust you." She decided.

...

So... after Rosy's bath, they were walking the streets of Gryvus in their casual clothes. They left their swords strapped to their waists, but as a sign of trust, they weren't wearing the leather pieces and padded clothes that had taken them all the way through the mountain range. Rosy still had over a dozen small weapons concealed in her clothing, the exact number of which were still unknown to Adrian, as a 'just in case' measure. She'd gotten Adrian into the habit of storing hidden weapons inside his own clothes as well, but he only had a couple.

'I want to see their weapons!' Rosy thought to him through their bond. She didn't dare tell Adrian that aloud, because they were being escorted by a gryphon envoy at the moment, but that sort of thought didn't exactly leak too much personal feelings if transmitted through the bond, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

'I was thinking more culture than weapon potential, Rosy.' Adrian thought back, giving her a little unintentional insight into his thought process with the leaks. He wanted to learn things related to how the gryphons organized their minds. Their habits and thought processes mostly. The general etiquette and how they managed their city, that sort of thing was what Adrian wanted to focus on learning.

Meanwhile, Rosy couldn't care less about any of that. She wanted to see how well they could fight. The gryphons had only one-sided communications with the rest of the planet for who-knows how many millennia. They'd been gaining knowledge from the four corners of the planet, but none of that knowledge ever actually left Gryvus. Their technology could be entirely beyond anything else out there currently, not that anyone knew, and that meant that they could also have weapons that Rosy hadn't ever used before. They'd used swords against her when she attacked them before, but she had no clue about what restrictions they'd put on themselves since she was actually  inside their city at the time.

"Hey, Envoy. Can you bring us to the shopping district?" Adrian asked their guide in response to Rosy's request, deciding that she had a point in thinking about their technology. Gryphons had incredible potential for information gathering, after all.

"Absolutely, sir. I have been instructed to bring you and your lover wherever you wish to go, with only a few exceptions." Their guide agreed immediately. Apparently, they were being rather free with the restrictions that they put on the duo. Since Rosy was actually fully rested this time, who knows the kind of devastation that she could cause, after all. It was a smart decision on their parts to keep that in mind, even if they had no intention of actually causing trouble.